DREAM: that I am in a restaurant with my sister (or someone like a sister), and close to the right of our table there was another table. 2 guys were sitting there, one of them is a young prince who is unwell, and has ordered food that were supposedly good for him. Both tables were covered with disheds so hardly any surface was showing. The light in the place was slightly low, and the tables were small and plain wood, almost shabby.
The seating arrangement from left to right was me, my sister, the prince, his companion. My sister complained about the smell of their food, so I switched place with her. I noticed that the prince’s dishes had little lables on each, propped on the plates, with the name or ingredients of each dish written in Malaysian (English alphabet) with a number on the bottome, like 213.–, as if that was the price. I thought it might be expensive but wasn’t sure what the currency was.
DREAMWORK:
A female pair and a male pair. Hmmm... Me, my shadow (sister), and the 2 men are the specific content of my shadow in this dream, which happened to be some part of my masculine. All of us sitting close together in a row with a narrow space in between, but not directly engaging with each other, not face to face. This is shadow stuff I’m not quite ready to confront, although I’ve an inkling of what it is.
The tables are set for a feast, full of dishes of food, but no one seemed to be in the mood to eat. The mood was a bit sombre, and from the start there seemed to be an undercurrent of hostility or resentment between the 2 pairs, between male and female. As I look at this tableau now, it seems as if this was an arranged meeting forced on the betrothed pair, my sister (shadow) and the prince (masculine). Shadow/Feminine is unwilling to accept the Masculine, so she complained about the smell of his food, to get further away from him. Prince/Masculine is unwell and in need of healing, but he can only heal if Shadow takes him in marriage (union).
So some part of my feminine in shadow is rejecting an ailing part of my masculine. She seems to despise him. But why? Because he is young and slight in stature, not the tough, strong warrior king who has come into his full power, the ideal masculine that she desires. What she is attracted to is power, which is what she secretly (or unconsciously) wants for herself. She does not realize that true empowerment has to come from within herself, and marrying a king in his peak of virility will only give her the illusion of a power that will never be her own.
I need to get her off her high horse (arrogance of ego), and show her that the prince is her soulmate. They are both young, and will grow up together. But first her heart has to be awakened by love, so her eyes can see. I don’t know how this can be done, though I trust I will be guided, as always...
But what of the indeciperable ‘labels’, my body?
I see, the prince and his man are foreigners, from a different culture. Closely related (Malaysian and Chinese are like second cousins, as far cultures go), but not exactly the same. I think this is more or less how I feel about the degree in which I can relate to a man’s life, to masculinity: I can relate to a certain degree, but much of it confounds me. “Why do men do what they do? I don’t get it.” pretty much sums it up. Yet I know that I know the masculine way of being and thinking and feeling, because it is inside me too, in my own masculine. But because I was born a woman I was conditioned by my culture as a woman, which means in my mind I’ve chosen a side, the woman’s side, and the purpose of being on one side is so you can be against another side.
I have been taught to choose a side, although some would say, “Well but of course, you are female!” But I know now that that’s when the split happened, and it doesn’t have to be this way. There doesn’t have to be sides. And this is why the prince/masculine is sickly and underdeveloped. He has been deprived of feminine nurture most of his life.
It is only a way of seeing, a belief put in place by ego out of fear. But there’s something else wrong with the prince, who grew up without sufficient feminine influence, and had formed his belief also courtesy of cultural programming. He has learned to attach a value to everything, and believes what the bottom line tells him. This is the compass by which he navigates life. In the dream he needed proof of what the dishes were made of, as well as the price of each dish. These numbers that he sought are the measure of his worth, for he does not have the confidence of someone who has been kept safe from the harshness of the world before he was ready to step out of the nest.
I see now that he only accepted this marital liaison because he believed it would bring him the power of manhood. He saw his bride-to-be only as chattel, as commodity to be traded or acquired, and used as leverage if need be. This was Shadow’s secret sorrow, and what the bad smell was. Dear God and Goddess, what a state of affairs!
There’s nothing left to do but try to resolve the situation, and I am the only one for the job. I have to go back into the dream and let things take their course as they will, trusting my body to guide me...
I take both of their hands (now that I’m sitting between the two of them) and hold them in my lap. I say to Shadow, “You are smart enough to know that this is your divinely betrothed, he is the one meant for you. But because ‘your side’ has rejected and neglected him, he has not fully grown into the man he is to be. But look at him, he has a good build and beautiful features, all the potential is there for the making of a fine man. All he needs is your love and nurture to come into his full being.” Then I turn to the prince and say, “And she needs you too, to help her become the woman of power she is meant to be. You already know that no amount of money or numbers or tangible proof is going to give you the self-confidence and self-worth you need to be a man, it can’t even buy her affections. But it is this lack of inner strength that’s keeping you down, you are actually depressed.” That’s why the atmosphere in here is so heavy, I think to myself. And the number, 213, is 3 x 71, 71 is a prime number; 3 is the number of masculinity, so this has to do with the masculine prime, as I know now.
I bring their hands together in my own, and I ask the prince’s attendant to join us. He was the prince’s ‘conscience’, his Jiminy Cricket, his guardian, and he was already moved to tears. He comes over and all 4 of us hug. Now we will have a feast to celebrate.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Love in Times of the Great Split, 3 New Episodes
Sunday, August 22, 2010
DREAMBITS:
My brother was talking, and I could see the words as he talked. I remember seeing “old 爸” (dad), printed by hand.
I was in a room like a small church chapel with pews. There were a handful of small children running around. I was about 12 y.o., wearing one of the plain white cotton dresses that my mother used to make for me and my sister when we were little. Suddenly a dog ran in, a big brown Doberman. He ran up to me, where I was crouched on the floor in between the pews, and started to play-bite my left arm, gnawing on it without hurting me. My whole wrist was in his huge mouth. I felt only a slight fear because he was bigger than I was, but I knew he was just playing out his aggressiveness like animals do. I think there was a smaller dog too, but in the background.
I somehow got away from him and was in the vestibule inside the front door of the church, and saw the Doberman streaked past me into the church. I didn’t even see him leave before.
We were on a family outing to see a movie. Everyone had gone in ahead except for me and my dad at the ticket booth buying tickets. Then my dad left too, cuz you don’t need more than one person to buy tickets. I ordered and paid the girl but it took a while for her to get the tickets to me. She was distracted by the phone, other customers, and the half-circular counter that wrapped around her was big and full of papers and stuff, like a messy office desk. I waited patiently and tracked her wherever she moved along the counter so as not to lose my turn or her attention entirely. Finally she handed the tickets to me, along with various brochures. Everyone there was Chinese, including the movie.
DREAMWORK:
My masculine familiar (my brother) is trying to bring my attention to the ancestral patriarchs of my genealogical line... but why in words and not images? Why mix English and Chinese? And why was it handwritten? What is it telling me about the masculine? Help me understand, my body...
It is about tradition. Although my brother grew up in the West and cannot read or write in his mother tongue, he has always, in his own way, respected and hung on to his roots and its traditions. He followed the ways of the world and has gotten to where he is in life by the road well-travelled, fulfilled the Great American middle-class dream of achieving status quo, and I for one, as holier-than-thou as I can be sometimes, cannot see signs that he is unhappy. He chose to live and stick by traditional values, and they have worked for him. And although I have come to know the values I want to live by, and have only recently learn to hang on to them – after a long detour, for mine is the path lesser navigated – I have yet to set course and launch my ship out of the harbour.
My dream is teaching me to respect other people’s paths, however different they might be from mine, even if they are ones that didn’t work for me, they are just as valid and valuable as paths go. The important thing is not which road you take, but what you take on the road, and what you do with it.
You must have respect for all walks of life, Grasshopper.
Next: The Doberman is a part of me. The young, playful and raw animal energy driven by instinct and the freedom of movement. Yet he (this is a masculine part) has in him the seed of aggression and destruction, and I fear that he may be too much for me to handle in my immature, underdeveloped state. The whole is made of both the masculine and the feminine, and the two energies need to hold each other with healthy respect, knowing when to come forward and take charge, and when to recede into the background. For it is but one body of power, and in a state of flux and ebb concurrently and constantly. In the dream I knew this and knew how to be in this relationship, but did not fully trust my knowing, and have also come to see the masculine energy as strictly a potentially dangerous animal trained to kill and maim (the Doberman), even though I secretly admired and envied his boundless drive and uninhibited freedom. As if he owns the world. And indeed he does, just as I/we do, except I have, through my conditioning and my wounds, allowed myself to be belittled and disempowered, and no longer feel I have the birthright to claim my place in the world, to move and act without self-consciousness, as if I own the world.
I stood by, feeling disenfranchized, resentful, and cowed by the beauty and grace of this raw power that I wished I had, not realizing that I do have it in me, it’s just been stunted, kept small (the little dog in the background). But the good news is, the portent of the dream, is that indeed we have the potential (which cannot be taken away from us – the Doberman that kept coming around) in us, to be the big, beautiful, free spirited and expressive beings that we were made to be. But, like a seed we were born with, it needs the right kind of condition to grow and mature. It needs the safety and purity (white dress) of a sacred space (the church), the sanctity of our inner temple, kept wholey with the constant prayers of the faithful.
Next: It has to do with my Chinese family and roots. Everyone else has gone on blithely with their lives as they were, except for me and my dad, who have chosen (or been chosen) to work on our own healing. Interesting how I’ve never seen the parallel paths we’re on. Then my dad left too, he is only interested in healing his physical symptoms, and has so far resisted confronting any other level. Everyone in my family has chosen to be anaesthetized by mindless filler, just as some part of myself has done. This dream is about my family and my roots, and also the state of the entire Chinese culture, which is in danger of losing its roots in the ‘middle way’ of Taoism. The wisdom of this tradition has been lost to the advances in technology, the bigger-better-faster, multi-tasking of life and its ‘rewards’, and the control and manipulation of the all-powerful god of mass media. We have all fallen under the spell of our time, and waking up is not only difficult, but not even wanted.
It has taken me a long time and much effort to finally have enough patience and fortitude and resources to stay on this path of awakening, but my dream is showing me that I will eventually get the tickets, healing and redemption(!) will prevail for my family, though not my race, the Chinese collective having now joined the global competition for the biggest piece of the pie. Returning to her foundation, the Tao, is the one true way to save China from the demise of collapsing under the weight of her own success, but I don’t think I will have the privilege of seeing that in my lifetime. However, I can help myself and my family through Tao. It sounds radical, as we have been Christian for 3 generations now going on 4, but I feel in my blood that we have been people of the middle way for far longer than that, and it is still behind us, like a backbone, and beneath us, as solid as the earth we walk on.
Found this site on the web: http://ldolphin.org/YinYang.shtml. Looks like a good place to start my studies.
______________
Monday, August 23, 2010
Days continue to slip by at an alarming pace, what used to feel like a trickling crick is now like a white rapid.
DREAMBITS:
I am with my sister in our apartment. On the balcony I could look down to the ground below, just reddish brown earth with greenery dotted here and there. It seemed about 10 to 15 floors up. We were mending clothes, ours and other people’s. I remember seeing the word ‘mending’. But I was feeling inadequate, as if I’m not really good at it, that my sister was better...
Later I saw people going by with dessert in their hands. One guy was holding a tart-shaped clear plastic dish with blackberry filling in it. All the desserts were made from blackberries. I saw the backside of the chef and knew it was G.L., a pastry chef at Loblaws where I used to work.
DREAMWORK:
Something I am not grounded at all about... 15 floors... What do these ‘floors’ mean, so often I dream of them? They do not mean the same thing, my body says, each dream is unique in its context. But there is always something ungrounded in me that I need to be aware of, being shown to me in each of these dreams.
I am ‘mending’ my personas (clothes) with my shadow (my sister), who is better at it than I am (she knows them better!) The word ‘mending’ is being pointed out to me because mending is what’s needed to heal the issues of my personas, not removing or disposing of them. Right, the baby and the water – the gold in the shadow. The gold in this case is my ability to ‘mend’: to heal. My persona of the healer needs mending, as I am aware of the many issues I have with wearing that hat.
At the moment, I am looking at those from a fair distance – 10, 15 storeys up – but even from this far away I could see the spots of hope here and there (the greenery). Again, I need to surrender to the process (how many times do I need to be told this anyway??!) and let my shadow be my guide. For the reward (dessert) for my summer’s shadow work is at hand – the fruit, blackberries – and the masculine is getting the best part (the filling), the essence of this work, which is made manifest and plain to see (clear container – vessel, channel). All the ‘desserts’ were made from the fruit of this work. All that I shall manifest are results of this work with my shadow, in the dark of night.
It was G.L., the hardworking chef with an independent spirit who knows what she’s working so hard for, and has found a way to be in the (corporate, patriarchal) world in relative comfort and balance, staying true to herself and her objectives, and best of all, having her creativity and eat it too! As an example, she would work long hours and days for several months, then take off on a dream vacation for a few months. She has managed to work out all the pieces of her life to fit this picture that she wants.
I only saw her from the back in the dream because the teaching is that I ought to follow the example of how she came to be where she is with her work (that it serves and supports her creativity and enjoyment of life), and that’s the only side of her my dream is pointing to.
My dream, and my role-model, are telling me that there is a way too, for me, to find this balance in the picture of my working life, to have my cake and eat it too.
_______________
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
DREAM: Yet another dream of being in the early bloom of love, this time with ex-love, G. Though he kept making little advances and gestures of intimacy toward me, he also kept shying away, and his kisses were quick and brief, before he turned half away from me. I remember most clearly his face in profile, peeking at me out of the corner of his lowered eyelid, a little smile playing in the corner of his lips. At one point we were walking with some friends outisde, and he put his arm around me. I longed for him to really kiss me. Then I was alone at home (second floor) working in my studio (I was a designer), when I glanced out the wall-to-wall windows in the front (it was like a sun room) I caught a glimpse of someone’s head passing by on the street below. I wasn’t sure if it was him, but my heart leapt up in a flutter, my soul ached from straining toward him.
DREAMWORK: I had a sudden flash while in the shower (another watery insight!) that these amorous dreams I’ve been having are healing dreams! Unlike ones I used to have, say, before this year, they were few and far in between, and never gave me the sense of fulfillment nor the depth of longing and pureness of love that these ones do. I wonder if it also has to do with still having some resentment at men for the destruction and cruelties they have wreaked in the world, which flared up briefly last night when we watched the movie “Divided We Fall”, a different kind of story with deep psychological insight into the Czech people during the time of the Nazis, and ultimately of human nature in all of its gore and glory.
All of these ex-loves carry projections of myself and therefore are mirror pieces of my own qualities, good, bad, and ugly. I fell in love at the time with these reflections that I saw in them, not knowing that it was myself, my inner masculine, that I longed for and loved. But it was only what was in the mirror that I attracted me, like Narcissus, the rest didn’t fit, so they all became ex-es. It has taken me 25 years to realize that the love I truly seek, have sought for so long, is in me. I think I have a glimpse just now, of how and why Rumi wrote his timeless poetry of the Beloved. It is as if once you touched the source of the spring, it never stops flowing for you, from you, through you. Rumi found the Source, and he never left.
Now I wish the same for myself, not only to tap into the flow, but to bath in it, drink from it, and revel in it. I don’t ever want to be apart from it. I think this is what they mean by the fountainhead of God, the water of Life, the Eternal Spring.
But I shall get back to the smaller yet no less significant details of the dream that will teach me. My body, help me.
Being a ‘designer’ in the dream is telling me that though I am on the right path of my creativity, I am still wanting to control the design of events in my life. Still planning ahead instead of just allowing the creativity to take place and shape. Still a bit afraid to surrender, like the way he kept slipping away in the dream, in spite of the knowing and the desire to be together. And it is the masculine in me that is fearful still, of not being productive (job and making money: having a job in the dream), not having recognition (a job title: as a designer in the dream), and not being socially acceptable (achieve status quo like everyone else: having friends in the dream, and he put his arm around me, as a show of approval of me, the knave that he was... I am...!). And up on the second floor – still not grounded.
He is a bit of a tease in the meantime, my masculine, still a bit immature, but no less his sweet, lovely self. We will be together one day, my beloved... (Final strains of soft violin plays, as scene fades to black)...
Stay tuned, for the next episode of “Love in Times of the Great Split”...
DREAMBITS:
My brother was talking, and I could see the words as he talked. I remember seeing “old 爸” (dad), printed by hand.
I was in a room like a small church chapel with pews. There were a handful of small children running around. I was about 12 y.o., wearing one of the plain white cotton dresses that my mother used to make for me and my sister when we were little. Suddenly a dog ran in, a big brown Doberman. He ran up to me, where I was crouched on the floor in between the pews, and started to play-bite my left arm, gnawing on it without hurting me. My whole wrist was in his huge mouth. I felt only a slight fear because he was bigger than I was, but I knew he was just playing out his aggressiveness like animals do. I think there was a smaller dog too, but in the background.
I somehow got away from him and was in the vestibule inside the front door of the church, and saw the Doberman streaked past me into the church. I didn’t even see him leave before.
We were on a family outing to see a movie. Everyone had gone in ahead except for me and my dad at the ticket booth buying tickets. Then my dad left too, cuz you don’t need more than one person to buy tickets. I ordered and paid the girl but it took a while for her to get the tickets to me. She was distracted by the phone, other customers, and the half-circular counter that wrapped around her was big and full of papers and stuff, like a messy office desk. I waited patiently and tracked her wherever she moved along the counter so as not to lose my turn or her attention entirely. Finally she handed the tickets to me, along with various brochures. Everyone there was Chinese, including the movie.
DREAMWORK:
My masculine familiar (my brother) is trying to bring my attention to the ancestral patriarchs of my genealogical line... but why in words and not images? Why mix English and Chinese? And why was it handwritten? What is it telling me about the masculine? Help me understand, my body...
It is about tradition. Although my brother grew up in the West and cannot read or write in his mother tongue, he has always, in his own way, respected and hung on to his roots and its traditions. He followed the ways of the world and has gotten to where he is in life by the road well-travelled, fulfilled the Great American middle-class dream of achieving status quo, and I for one, as holier-than-thou as I can be sometimes, cannot see signs that he is unhappy. He chose to live and stick by traditional values, and they have worked for him. And although I have come to know the values I want to live by, and have only recently learn to hang on to them – after a long detour, for mine is the path lesser navigated – I have yet to set course and launch my ship out of the harbour.
My dream is teaching me to respect other people’s paths, however different they might be from mine, even if they are ones that didn’t work for me, they are just as valid and valuable as paths go. The important thing is not which road you take, but what you take on the road, and what you do with it.
You must have respect for all walks of life, Grasshopper.
Next: The Doberman is a part of me. The young, playful and raw animal energy driven by instinct and the freedom of movement. Yet he (this is a masculine part) has in him the seed of aggression and destruction, and I fear that he may be too much for me to handle in my immature, underdeveloped state. The whole is made of both the masculine and the feminine, and the two energies need to hold each other with healthy respect, knowing when to come forward and take charge, and when to recede into the background. For it is but one body of power, and in a state of flux and ebb concurrently and constantly. In the dream I knew this and knew how to be in this relationship, but did not fully trust my knowing, and have also come to see the masculine energy as strictly a potentially dangerous animal trained to kill and maim (the Doberman), even though I secretly admired and envied his boundless drive and uninhibited freedom. As if he owns the world. And indeed he does, just as I/we do, except I have, through my conditioning and my wounds, allowed myself to be belittled and disempowered, and no longer feel I have the birthright to claim my place in the world, to move and act without self-consciousness, as if I own the world.
I stood by, feeling disenfranchized, resentful, and cowed by the beauty and grace of this raw power that I wished I had, not realizing that I do have it in me, it’s just been stunted, kept small (the little dog in the background). But the good news is, the portent of the dream, is that indeed we have the potential (which cannot be taken away from us – the Doberman that kept coming around) in us, to be the big, beautiful, free spirited and expressive beings that we were made to be. But, like a seed we were born with, it needs the right kind of condition to grow and mature. It needs the safety and purity (white dress) of a sacred space (the church), the sanctity of our inner temple, kept wholey with the constant prayers of the faithful.
Next: It has to do with my Chinese family and roots. Everyone else has gone on blithely with their lives as they were, except for me and my dad, who have chosen (or been chosen) to work on our own healing. Interesting how I’ve never seen the parallel paths we’re on. Then my dad left too, he is only interested in healing his physical symptoms, and has so far resisted confronting any other level. Everyone in my family has chosen to be anaesthetized by mindless filler, just as some part of myself has done. This dream is about my family and my roots, and also the state of the entire Chinese culture, which is in danger of losing its roots in the ‘middle way’ of Taoism. The wisdom of this tradition has been lost to the advances in technology, the bigger-better-faster, multi-tasking of life and its ‘rewards’, and the control and manipulation of the all-powerful god of mass media. We have all fallen under the spell of our time, and waking up is not only difficult, but not even wanted.
It has taken me a long time and much effort to finally have enough patience and fortitude and resources to stay on this path of awakening, but my dream is showing me that I will eventually get the tickets, healing and redemption(!) will prevail for my family, though not my race, the Chinese collective having now joined the global competition for the biggest piece of the pie. Returning to her foundation, the Tao, is the one true way to save China from the demise of collapsing under the weight of her own success, but I don’t think I will have the privilege of seeing that in my lifetime. However, I can help myself and my family through Tao. It sounds radical, as we have been Christian for 3 generations now going on 4, but I feel in my blood that we have been people of the middle way for far longer than that, and it is still behind us, like a backbone, and beneath us, as solid as the earth we walk on.
Found this site on the web: http://ldolphin.org/YinYang.shtml. Looks like a good place to start my studies.
______________
Monday, August 23, 2010
Days continue to slip by at an alarming pace, what used to feel like a trickling crick is now like a white rapid.
DREAMBITS:
I am with my sister in our apartment. On the balcony I could look down to the ground below, just reddish brown earth with greenery dotted here and there. It seemed about 10 to 15 floors up. We were mending clothes, ours and other people’s. I remember seeing the word ‘mending’. But I was feeling inadequate, as if I’m not really good at it, that my sister was better...
Later I saw people going by with dessert in their hands. One guy was holding a tart-shaped clear plastic dish with blackberry filling in it. All the desserts were made from blackberries. I saw the backside of the chef and knew it was G.L., a pastry chef at Loblaws where I used to work.
DREAMWORK:
Something I am not grounded at all about... 15 floors... What do these ‘floors’ mean, so often I dream of them? They do not mean the same thing, my body says, each dream is unique in its context. But there is always something ungrounded in me that I need to be aware of, being shown to me in each of these dreams.
I am ‘mending’ my personas (clothes) with my shadow (my sister), who is better at it than I am (she knows them better!) The word ‘mending’ is being pointed out to me because mending is what’s needed to heal the issues of my personas, not removing or disposing of them. Right, the baby and the water – the gold in the shadow. The gold in this case is my ability to ‘mend’: to heal. My persona of the healer needs mending, as I am aware of the many issues I have with wearing that hat.
At the moment, I am looking at those from a fair distance – 10, 15 storeys up – but even from this far away I could see the spots of hope here and there (the greenery). Again, I need to surrender to the process (how many times do I need to be told this anyway??!) and let my shadow be my guide. For the reward (dessert) for my summer’s shadow work is at hand – the fruit, blackberries – and the masculine is getting the best part (the filling), the essence of this work, which is made manifest and plain to see (clear container – vessel, channel). All the ‘desserts’ were made from the fruit of this work. All that I shall manifest are results of this work with my shadow, in the dark of night.
It was G.L., the hardworking chef with an independent spirit who knows what she’s working so hard for, and has found a way to be in the (corporate, patriarchal) world in relative comfort and balance, staying true to herself and her objectives, and best of all, having her creativity and eat it too! As an example, she would work long hours and days for several months, then take off on a dream vacation for a few months. She has managed to work out all the pieces of her life to fit this picture that she wants.
I only saw her from the back in the dream because the teaching is that I ought to follow the example of how she came to be where she is with her work (that it serves and supports her creativity and enjoyment of life), and that’s the only side of her my dream is pointing to.
My dream, and my role-model, are telling me that there is a way too, for me, to find this balance in the picture of my working life, to have my cake and eat it too.
_______________
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
DREAM: Yet another dream of being in the early bloom of love, this time with ex-love, G. Though he kept making little advances and gestures of intimacy toward me, he also kept shying away, and his kisses were quick and brief, before he turned half away from me. I remember most clearly his face in profile, peeking at me out of the corner of his lowered eyelid, a little smile playing in the corner of his lips. At one point we were walking with some friends outisde, and he put his arm around me. I longed for him to really kiss me. Then I was alone at home (second floor) working in my studio (I was a designer), when I glanced out the wall-to-wall windows in the front (it was like a sun room) I caught a glimpse of someone’s head passing by on the street below. I wasn’t sure if it was him, but my heart leapt up in a flutter, my soul ached from straining toward him.
DREAMWORK: I had a sudden flash while in the shower (another watery insight!) that these amorous dreams I’ve been having are healing dreams! Unlike ones I used to have, say, before this year, they were few and far in between, and never gave me the sense of fulfillment nor the depth of longing and pureness of love that these ones do. I wonder if it also has to do with still having some resentment at men for the destruction and cruelties they have wreaked in the world, which flared up briefly last night when we watched the movie “Divided We Fall”, a different kind of story with deep psychological insight into the Czech people during the time of the Nazis, and ultimately of human nature in all of its gore and glory.
All of these ex-loves carry projections of myself and therefore are mirror pieces of my own qualities, good, bad, and ugly. I fell in love at the time with these reflections that I saw in them, not knowing that it was myself, my inner masculine, that I longed for and loved. But it was only what was in the mirror that I attracted me, like Narcissus, the rest didn’t fit, so they all became ex-es. It has taken me 25 years to realize that the love I truly seek, have sought for so long, is in me. I think I have a glimpse just now, of how and why Rumi wrote his timeless poetry of the Beloved. It is as if once you touched the source of the spring, it never stops flowing for you, from you, through you. Rumi found the Source, and he never left.
Now I wish the same for myself, not only to tap into the flow, but to bath in it, drink from it, and revel in it. I don’t ever want to be apart from it. I think this is what they mean by the fountainhead of God, the water of Life, the Eternal Spring.
But I shall get back to the smaller yet no less significant details of the dream that will teach me. My body, help me.
Being a ‘designer’ in the dream is telling me that though I am on the right path of my creativity, I am still wanting to control the design of events in my life. Still planning ahead instead of just allowing the creativity to take place and shape. Still a bit afraid to surrender, like the way he kept slipping away in the dream, in spite of the knowing and the desire to be together. And it is the masculine in me that is fearful still, of not being productive (job and making money: having a job in the dream), not having recognition (a job title: as a designer in the dream), and not being socially acceptable (achieve status quo like everyone else: having friends in the dream, and he put his arm around me, as a show of approval of me, the knave that he was... I am...!). And up on the second floor – still not grounded.
He is a bit of a tease in the meantime, my masculine, still a bit immature, but no less his sweet, lovely self. We will be together one day, my beloved... (Final strains of soft violin plays, as scene fades to black)...
Stay tuned, for the next episode of “Love in Times of the Great Split”...
Saturday, August 21, 2010
The Great White Lie of Pop•op & Soc•con
DREAM BIT: A white or blonde lab with worms – image of a long white worm almost the full length of the dog.
What does a dog represent in me? My outer expressions and persona, in this case, the ‘good’ or ‘light’ side that still wants to wag its tail and please everyone. But it has worms, specifically a big fat white one, so whatever’s eating or corroding my outer expression of myself, my outer confidence, is feeding off the ‘good’ and the ‘light’ quality.
It’s about my self-image and self-confidence being sapped and corrupted by the worm of “pop-op” – popular opinion – and “soc-con” – social conditioning. I still care too much how I appear, what others may think, how I measure up, what I’m worth. The worm is white because we have collectively white-washed the truth of what it is, a parasite that feeds off our true Selves. It is a worm, and not a dove or a flower, because it's a symbol of our lower nature that burrows and penetrates our natural defenses insidiously, so not only are we unaware the ‘enemy’ who lives inside of us, or that it originally came from the outside, or even that it was most often introduced to us by those with the best of intentions, our parents, our elders, our culture. (OMG this is a seriously clumsy sentence... fix later...)
This Great White Lie of a Worm is what ails the White Dog of my persona of self-confidence, self-possession, and self-worth.
Although this is something I have become aware of for some time, I have yet to finished the work on it...
How to kill the great white worm, Dragonslayer?
What does a dog represent in me? My outer expressions and persona, in this case, the ‘good’ or ‘light’ side that still wants to wag its tail and please everyone. But it has worms, specifically a big fat white one, so whatever’s eating or corroding my outer expression of myself, my outer confidence, is feeding off the ‘good’ and the ‘light’ quality.
It’s about my self-image and self-confidence being sapped and corrupted by the worm of “pop-op” – popular opinion – and “soc-con” – social conditioning. I still care too much how I appear, what others may think, how I measure up, what I’m worth. The worm is white because we have collectively white-washed the truth of what it is, a parasite that feeds off our true Selves. It is a worm, and not a dove or a flower, because it's a symbol of our lower nature that burrows and penetrates our natural defenses insidiously, so not only are we unaware the ‘enemy’ who lives inside of us, or that it originally came from the outside, or even that it was most often introduced to us by those with the best of intentions, our parents, our elders, our culture. (OMG this is a seriously clumsy sentence... fix later...)
This Great White Lie of a Worm is what ails the White Dog of my persona of self-confidence, self-possession, and self-worth.
Although this is something I have become aware of for some time, I have yet to finished the work on it...
How to kill the great white worm, Dragonslayer?
Thursday, August 19, 2010
An Alchemical Pot of Dreams
DREAM BITS:
I got onto a platform and sat under an enormous brass bell that covered me mostly, hanging about a foot above the floor. I pulled the rope attached to it, and there was a conflicting feeling inside of me. I knew pulling it would make the whole thing go up like an elevator, and the words "81 floors" came to me. But even knowing how high that means and how scary that’s going to be, I couldn’t help but keep pulling the rope. It rose rapidly though steadily, and I was terrified. I wanted to look over the edge but was afraid to move. There was nothing physically threatening.
In another part I was at some kind of festive occasion with lots of people. I was a child about 8 or 9. Some of us were wearing a headdress made out of shiny purple plastic ribbons, the kind you see toy windmills made with. A man beside me lifted me up onto his lap so I could sit up higher and be seen by someone taking photos.
There was a tiny boy who was part of our group. He was only 3 or 4, and small and round like a softball. He was just happy and bouncing all over the place, literally, and no matter what he bounced off, he never got hurt. We called him Teflon Boy, and we loved him and were proud of him.
In another part I was an adult, sitting at a table with others. The table was covered with a tablecloth, and the corner right where I was sitting could be folded out from beneath somehow, and became a perfectly square corner, even though the moveable piece seemed long and pointed, more the shape of a old-fashioned helicopter propeller blade, or a child’s sword from an older time. But it was hidden under the tablecloth so I couldn’t really see. I looked up and saw that the other side of the table had an extension, ornately carved in wood, reminded me of the lacy top of a Middle Eastern screen, and nearly as big as the table.
DREAMWORK:
It seems to me that my dreams the last few days have been especially clear and to-the-point, like being hit over the head with the message really. Well, this one is another bonk.
I am under THE biggest call of my life – HELLO! Bonk! Bonk! It’s not a large space I’m perched on but I am actually quite safe, except for my own preconceived fears. Yet I am compelled by something inside to do the opposite of what my fears would want me to do. I am terrified of falling even though there was no sign that I would. It’s all in my head.
But what does “81 floors” mean? 81 is 3 to the power of 4 = masculine to the power of feminine = when masculine and feminine in me are brought into The Relationship, of the Sacred Marriage, coniunctio, which is a stage in the alchemical process of bringing heaven and earth, with all of their opposites, into union. This sounds to me an extremely lofty goal (probably why I was terrified of the height) but the dream gives me comfort and optimism that ascend is inevitable, swift, and safe, IF ONLY I COULD THROW MY FEARS OVERBOARD – BONK! BONK! BONK! Okay, okay...
I hereby surrender all of my fears of the unknown, of the future, of failure, of success, of deprivation, of pain and suffering, to Source, and I fill the space with divine love and self love, light, and healing.
Also found this on the web (www.soul-guidance.com):
“The alchemist Pernety (1858) also knows three coniunctio’s: "The first one is called double coniunctio. It is between ‘agens’ and ‘patiens’, between the male and the female, the form and the substance, quicksilver and sulfur, the subtle and the gross. The second one is called threefold, because it unifies three things: the body, the soul and the spirit. Thus reduce trinity to unity. The third one is called fourfold, because it unifies the four elements into one, but also includes the three others."
Hmmm, what an incredible exploration this is... shall I continue?
In the next part I was dearly valued and held in love by my people. A celebration was put on for those of us of the same age, perhaps it was some kind of initiation or commencement ritual, and we were crowned in purple, the colour of royalty. My benign masculine, my familiar, gave me a boost to make sure that I was seen and ‘recognized’.
Teflon Boy is the happy fool, or naif, a child-like joy and impulse, but he is loved and protected by spirit so no harm came to him. As long as I am pure at heart, I will not come to harm – GO! GO WITH PERMISSION! GO WILD!!!
These young parts of myself are being shown love and acknowledgement from the collective, and encouraged to 'go out and play!' with no fear.
Another observation I have is that the last part of my dream (that I recall) is often the toughest to decode, but I’ll give it a whirl...
The table in the dream felt like a forum to me, a meeting place where a group gathers to ‘table’ their concerns, along with their opinions and experiences. My corner, which at first seemed like something oddly shaped for the existing table, somehow folded down and fit right in. I shall conform to the group. Hmmmm, another shocker of a message to me, who has a lifetime of non-conformity issues and struggles. Just like that, I shall conform. Probably because I have also longed all of my life to belong.
All of this was presented under a cover (the tablecloth) of formality and civility, there was no recrimination, nor awkwardness, nor embarrassment. I was quietly brought into the collective shape. When that happened, suddenly the table grew an extension like a tree growing a branch, a lacework of intricate craftsmanship and detail, something I’ve always thought beautiful and mysterious at the same time. A manifestation of creativity that’s full of freedom and movement from its positive and negative spaces, warm and passionate from the spiciness and redness of the wood. It reminds me of the Sufis, of Rumi, whose greatness and creativity is a mystery that I constantly marvel at. When I experience his poetry, I feel swirling, flowing, fragrant energy sweeping us under a timeless spell of love and light, humanness and godness. I see it touching unerringly the deepest part of each of us, and going from one to another like a bee on a mission, connecting us to a greater web than the one we thought we belonged to.
The table is what is known to our civilization, the screen extension is what’s still a mystery to us. But the two are one piece, made of the wood of the same tree. And more than anything, Rumi speaks of wholeness to me. It is by going into the mystery, by way of Rumi’s path, that I will find my belonging, my tribe.
Hmmm, that’s pretty specific instruction too... I need to become a student of Rumi.
I got onto a platform and sat under an enormous brass bell that covered me mostly, hanging about a foot above the floor. I pulled the rope attached to it, and there was a conflicting feeling inside of me. I knew pulling it would make the whole thing go up like an elevator, and the words "81 floors" came to me. But even knowing how high that means and how scary that’s going to be, I couldn’t help but keep pulling the rope. It rose rapidly though steadily, and I was terrified. I wanted to look over the edge but was afraid to move. There was nothing physically threatening.
In another part I was at some kind of festive occasion with lots of people. I was a child about 8 or 9. Some of us were wearing a headdress made out of shiny purple plastic ribbons, the kind you see toy windmills made with. A man beside me lifted me up onto his lap so I could sit up higher and be seen by someone taking photos.
There was a tiny boy who was part of our group. He was only 3 or 4, and small and round like a softball. He was just happy and bouncing all over the place, literally, and no matter what he bounced off, he never got hurt. We called him Teflon Boy, and we loved him and were proud of him.
In another part I was an adult, sitting at a table with others. The table was covered with a tablecloth, and the corner right where I was sitting could be folded out from beneath somehow, and became a perfectly square corner, even though the moveable piece seemed long and pointed, more the shape of a old-fashioned helicopter propeller blade, or a child’s sword from an older time. But it was hidden under the tablecloth so I couldn’t really see. I looked up and saw that the other side of the table had an extension, ornately carved in wood, reminded me of the lacy top of a Middle Eastern screen, and nearly as big as the table.
DREAMWORK:
It seems to me that my dreams the last few days have been especially clear and to-the-point, like being hit over the head with the message really. Well, this one is another bonk.
I am under THE biggest call of my life – HELLO! Bonk! Bonk! It’s not a large space I’m perched on but I am actually quite safe, except for my own preconceived fears. Yet I am compelled by something inside to do the opposite of what my fears would want me to do. I am terrified of falling even though there was no sign that I would. It’s all in my head.
But what does “81 floors” mean? 81 is 3 to the power of 4 = masculine to the power of feminine = when masculine and feminine in me are brought into The Relationship, of the Sacred Marriage, coniunctio, which is a stage in the alchemical process of bringing heaven and earth, with all of their opposites, into union. This sounds to me an extremely lofty goal (probably why I was terrified of the height) but the dream gives me comfort and optimism that ascend is inevitable, swift, and safe, IF ONLY I COULD THROW MY FEARS OVERBOARD – BONK! BONK! BONK! Okay, okay...
I hereby surrender all of my fears of the unknown, of the future, of failure, of success, of deprivation, of pain and suffering, to Source, and I fill the space with divine love and self love, light, and healing.
Also found this on the web (www.soul-guidance.com):
“The alchemist Pernety (1858) also knows three coniunctio’s: "The first one is called double coniunctio. It is between ‘agens’ and ‘patiens’, between the male and the female, the form and the substance, quicksilver and sulfur, the subtle and the gross. The second one is called threefold, because it unifies three things: the body, the soul and the spirit. Thus reduce trinity to unity. The third one is called fourfold, because it unifies the four elements into one, but also includes the three others."
Hmmm, what an incredible exploration this is... shall I continue?
In the next part I was dearly valued and held in love by my people. A celebration was put on for those of us of the same age, perhaps it was some kind of initiation or commencement ritual, and we were crowned in purple, the colour of royalty. My benign masculine, my familiar, gave me a boost to make sure that I was seen and ‘recognized’.
Teflon Boy is the happy fool, or naif, a child-like joy and impulse, but he is loved and protected by spirit so no harm came to him. As long as I am pure at heart, I will not come to harm – GO! GO WITH PERMISSION! GO WILD!!!
These young parts of myself are being shown love and acknowledgement from the collective, and encouraged to 'go out and play!' with no fear.
Another observation I have is that the last part of my dream (that I recall) is often the toughest to decode, but I’ll give it a whirl...
The table in the dream felt like a forum to me, a meeting place where a group gathers to ‘table’ their concerns, along with their opinions and experiences. My corner, which at first seemed like something oddly shaped for the existing table, somehow folded down and fit right in. I shall conform to the group. Hmmmm, another shocker of a message to me, who has a lifetime of non-conformity issues and struggles. Just like that, I shall conform. Probably because I have also longed all of my life to belong.
All of this was presented under a cover (the tablecloth) of formality and civility, there was no recrimination, nor awkwardness, nor embarrassment. I was quietly brought into the collective shape. When that happened, suddenly the table grew an extension like a tree growing a branch, a lacework of intricate craftsmanship and detail, something I’ve always thought beautiful and mysterious at the same time. A manifestation of creativity that’s full of freedom and movement from its positive and negative spaces, warm and passionate from the spiciness and redness of the wood. It reminds me of the Sufis, of Rumi, whose greatness and creativity is a mystery that I constantly marvel at. When I experience his poetry, I feel swirling, flowing, fragrant energy sweeping us under a timeless spell of love and light, humanness and godness. I see it touching unerringly the deepest part of each of us, and going from one to another like a bee on a mission, connecting us to a greater web than the one we thought we belonged to.
The table is what is known to our civilization, the screen extension is what’s still a mystery to us. But the two are one piece, made of the wood of the same tree. And more than anything, Rumi speaks of wholeness to me. It is by going into the mystery, by way of Rumi’s path, that I will find my belonging, my tribe.
Hmmm, that’s pretty specific instruction too... I need to become a student of Rumi.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Another Lesson for the Feminine
DREAM: This one came as a bit of a surprise, as I had not thought about these people, nor remembered them in years... and I do not recall a story or a scene in the dream, just the characters and their names. I saw Christine, a senior designer that I worked with at a design firm when I was in my early thirties. I saw the first 3 letters of her name: Ehl, but can’t remember the rest. Then I saw Paul, a freelance production artist who dated her at one time but had stayed friends with her, and his last name was Strand (I don’t know if this is true, or something the dream wanted to tell me). I woke somewhat at this point, because I was so surprised that these people I had forgotten so completely had shown up in a dream. Then I remembered that Paul had stepped in as caretaker when she became ill with lung cancer, until she died a few months later.
DREAMWORK:
Christine was quiet and introverted, though not unfriendly during interaction. But still, there was always an air of superiority about her, in the way she dressed, the way she spoke, the way she held herself slightly but distinctly apart from others. Even with those who were considered her friends at the agency, unless she had something to do or say to them, she was never in the thick of things. She seemed lonely at times to me, though she had no less friends than I did in the company. Although she was said little, she also had a stubborn streak and a stiff backbone when it came to defending her work, and I do remember now the fierceness in her eyes, quietly but clearly delivering the ‘don’t mess with me’ message.
These are the things about her that I see in myself. Paul, on the other hand, seemed to have come out of no where, like an air-dropped gift parcel, like grace. I don’t know if Christine did, but I would never have thought nor expected a man, even a friend or lover, to come to my rescue unconditionally. No less because I’ve always appeared the strong, independent woman who needs nothing from a man.
I can see my dream shaking its finger at me, tsk-tsking, “Still playing the tough chick, heh? Still won’t let the masculine come too close... Well, girl, if you say you want the split to mend, so you could become whole, then ain’t you standin’ in your own way?” I know this to be true, and I am abashed, so why the cold, hard and prickly persona, even if and when I’m ‘dying’ for help?
This is ancestral, according to my body, as many, many generations of women have had to develop a hardboiled exterior to survive patriarchy and the hardship of life. I can see how this was passed on from my mother’s mother to her daughters, and from my mother to me and my sister. And although we have all been armoured for so long that I’m not sure we can even take it off, I have begun to hear the occasional quiet plea in my mother’s physical symptoms and my dad’s protests, that what ails her is a neediness for some garden-variety TLC. Not care in the way of medicine sought for and shoved down her throat with patronizing admonitions and tough love, which is what she gets from my dad. She needs love and nurture in its most basic and simple form, open, honest, and tender.
I see now that I carry still the same affliction, even though I am blessed with a man who has never been stingy with showing me love and affection openly. There’s still a part of me that acts as if I don’t care one way or another, whether he does or not. ‘I don’t need it’, I sneer, pushing his gift away, even knowing now that I have pushed a few men out of my life this way, because they bought the act, the one called ‘I don’t need you.’
The truth, at one time far too painful for me to even consider, is that I do need it, my masculine, to be wholly human, fully creative, and as one with myself and the universe.
How do I heal this wound in my feminine that resists the union? Help me please, my body.
This is not only an ancestral trauma, but also a collective one. Women have been used and abused and abandoned by men throughout human history – I don’t think I can see the bottom of this wound... We’ve come to believe and accept that men cause harm and all things ‘bad’, thus tarring all of masculinity this way. Even when the benign masculine is evident, we reject it outright with mistrust and disdain or simply, fear, for the baby was long gone with the bath water. In our conviction we cannot see the irony, that the wound cannot heal without the masculine.
Is it forgiveness that’s needed? No. Surrendering? Yes. Surrender what? Surrender my fear of the masculine, and the need for control, which is in place as the armour I wear. Is that it? No. What else, my body? Open to the love that’s coming to you, intentionally. Hold fast to your lover’s tender gaze, and hold yourself open to him. That’s what all those amorous dreams were about. Acknowledge and bring that feeling of love and openness into waking consciousness more and more, until shadow is filled by light. But start by acknowledging it, honour it and submit to it, my need and longing for it. Arms open, down on my knees, full surrender, as the feminine who is humbled by the wisdom in her wounding, and has finally learned that she can never be fully her Self without him, all of Him.
DREAMWORK:
Christine was quiet and introverted, though not unfriendly during interaction. But still, there was always an air of superiority about her, in the way she dressed, the way she spoke, the way she held herself slightly but distinctly apart from others. Even with those who were considered her friends at the agency, unless she had something to do or say to them, she was never in the thick of things. She seemed lonely at times to me, though she had no less friends than I did in the company. Although she was said little, she also had a stubborn streak and a stiff backbone when it came to defending her work, and I do remember now the fierceness in her eyes, quietly but clearly delivering the ‘don’t mess with me’ message.
These are the things about her that I see in myself. Paul, on the other hand, seemed to have come out of no where, like an air-dropped gift parcel, like grace. I don’t know if Christine did, but I would never have thought nor expected a man, even a friend or lover, to come to my rescue unconditionally. No less because I’ve always appeared the strong, independent woman who needs nothing from a man.
I can see my dream shaking its finger at me, tsk-tsking, “Still playing the tough chick, heh? Still won’t let the masculine come too close... Well, girl, if you say you want the split to mend, so you could become whole, then ain’t you standin’ in your own way?” I know this to be true, and I am abashed, so why the cold, hard and prickly persona, even if and when I’m ‘dying’ for help?
This is ancestral, according to my body, as many, many generations of women have had to develop a hardboiled exterior to survive patriarchy and the hardship of life. I can see how this was passed on from my mother’s mother to her daughters, and from my mother to me and my sister. And although we have all been armoured for so long that I’m not sure we can even take it off, I have begun to hear the occasional quiet plea in my mother’s physical symptoms and my dad’s protests, that what ails her is a neediness for some garden-variety TLC. Not care in the way of medicine sought for and shoved down her throat with patronizing admonitions and tough love, which is what she gets from my dad. She needs love and nurture in its most basic and simple form, open, honest, and tender.
I see now that I carry still the same affliction, even though I am blessed with a man who has never been stingy with showing me love and affection openly. There’s still a part of me that acts as if I don’t care one way or another, whether he does or not. ‘I don’t need it’, I sneer, pushing his gift away, even knowing now that I have pushed a few men out of my life this way, because they bought the act, the one called ‘I don’t need you.’
The truth, at one time far too painful for me to even consider, is that I do need it, my masculine, to be wholly human, fully creative, and as one with myself and the universe.
How do I heal this wound in my feminine that resists the union? Help me please, my body.
This is not only an ancestral trauma, but also a collective one. Women have been used and abused and abandoned by men throughout human history – I don’t think I can see the bottom of this wound... We’ve come to believe and accept that men cause harm and all things ‘bad’, thus tarring all of masculinity this way. Even when the benign masculine is evident, we reject it outright with mistrust and disdain or simply, fear, for the baby was long gone with the bath water. In our conviction we cannot see the irony, that the wound cannot heal without the masculine.
Is it forgiveness that’s needed? No. Surrendering? Yes. Surrender what? Surrender my fear of the masculine, and the need for control, which is in place as the armour I wear. Is that it? No. What else, my body? Open to the love that’s coming to you, intentionally. Hold fast to your lover’s tender gaze, and hold yourself open to him. That’s what all those amorous dreams were about. Acknowledge and bring that feeling of love and openness into waking consciousness more and more, until shadow is filled by light. But start by acknowledging it, honour it and submit to it, my need and longing for it. Arms open, down on my knees, full surrender, as the feminine who is humbled by the wisdom in her wounding, and has finally learned that she can never be fully her Self without him, all of Him.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
The Courtship Continues...
Friday, August 13, 2010
DREAM that J., an old love, was visiting. We were in a house or building with many equal-sized rooms. My brother was there. J. asked for conditioner, and I was determined to be a good hostess. Finally I found some, a small travel-sized one. After that he kept coming back to me to chat. At one point he said, you know sometimes on the railway tracks just below the rails there’s a space? I envisioned this as he said it, acting as if impatient for him to get to the point, but really just playing coy. I would like to take you there some time, he said. I tried to play it cool, but we were undoubtedly flirting. There were lots of people around but I didn’t care.
In the twilight of waking, the thought occurred to me that he must have been born a Cancer. There was always gentle compassion and the willingness to help, even small things, though he had never tried to disguised the other side of his nature, the ambitious go-getter who knows his charm and didn’t hesitate to go after what he wants. But it was the blue aura of melancholy that always had me in its thralls. The Blue Boy, yet another Tubercular. It still gets me in the blood.
DREAMWORK:
Still dreaming and working along the same line of bringing my masc and fem together, one stitch at a time it seems, in this spiritual suturing...
The same question of ‘What does he represent in me’ applies here, I think. And if my brother represents the kindred part of my masculine, then I would say he was here to support and help me, in the background. He (or my sister, when she’s in my dream) would also mean familiarity and safety to me, an environment or situation I knew about or have been in before. Could it also mean that whatever healing comes of it will also heal my family?? It feels so in my body. Back to J...
Physically he was what I would call ‘my type’, his temperament suggested just enough dark mystique – the brooding, melancholic undertone – that seemed to promise a depth and intensity I’ve always found no resistance to. In him I also heard the persistent call to surrender with complete abandon, the only kind of human power that I would willingly submit to at that time. Like bees to honey, moths to flame, iron fillings to magnet. Yet somehow I sensed the mortal demise inherent in succumbing to that spell, as the bees and moths must have too.
He had beautiful hair, as I mentioned, classic picture of a Tubercular – abundant, luxurious and untamed, mad with a feverish desire to create (and procreate), to wring the last drop out of life and leave a mark, knowing that the end is foreshadowed when you burn the candle from both ends. This is the image of Lover as an archetype to me, not how he really was in life.
In the dream he asked for hair conditioner – care and nourishment for his crowning glory. And I think I found just the right one for him – one for travel, the desire and need to travel being a keynote symptom of a Tubercular. It is what drives, and gives them the drive to move as much as they do and as hard as they do, in restless search of what they seek. Whether they know what it is they seek or not is, at least for the moment, irrelevant, for they are compelled from deep within their nature to ‘be on the road’. This is what afflicts me now.
He is, I am, getting ready, for the conditions needed, to hit the road. And I will, or perhaps already have, the requisite conditions.
As I connect the dots in the Tubercular picture of this dream and my waking life, I cannot help but note that in the last couple of months I’ve watched about 2 dozen dvds on travel around the world, and just the last few days since the Algonquin trip, I have been seriously considering travelling at the least our continent in a mobile home, but only brought it out into the open with Michael this morning. I can feel the picture ‘tightening’ up, like we say with a piece of artwork or a project coming together, but in this case the sense of it is deeper in my belly, broad at the base and tapering up the centre of my body.
In the last part of the dream he kept coming back to engage with me, to connect, also to tempt me and draw me out. So I guess my life will be one lived on the road from the point of departure from here. I feel excitement like live wire running in my veins. Is that what ‘wire in the blood’ means??
To keep the ‘romance’ of this kind of life alive, he, my masculine, will return again and again to go off the tracks now and then, and going to the secret hideaway that only he knows, to renew our relationship and our spirit.
The space below the railroad tracks is like a secret hideaway for couples to go and be alone, because they don’t want to be seen together in public. And sometimes the best place to hide is right under its nose.
Railway tracks are the path trains run on, and trains are high-speed collective movers, so railroads are what the masses would choose to travel through their lives on. It’s predictable, tried and true, predetermined, and supposedly safe and comfortable.
I have a feeling I am not getting this one... just skirting the perimeters with the last few paragraphs, and blabbering... need a break...
Took a dose of AURUM C40/4 before bed.
_______________
Saturday, August 14, 2010
It’s been 2 months since I left my job, and it has taken that long for me to really relax into this new way of life, and to become fully aware of how much I have come to love all of what has been happening to me, my relationships (to myself, my body, Michael, our cat Nemo, Nature and the elements, food, art, humanity, to name but a few) and my perspectives. There is a sense of more spaciousness inside myself, as I discovered more spaciousness outside of myself. My life is as simple and as peaceful as it’s ever been, and more and more I catch myself closely examining the preciousness of an ordinary moment in an extraordinary light, and marvel at how I’ve managed to live decades without noticing any of it. Everyday brings a bit more awareness, insight, healing, little pieces of myself is found and brought home, and I can just detect an underground current of strength building quietly in the deep dark of my being.
BATHTUB INSIGHT:
I saw an image of a piece of plum colour swatch, then a sky blue one. The message is: A plum of an opportunity with the sky as its limit will come to me.
I am going to read all of my writing from the last 2 months. I think the bigger picture will have something to tell me as well.
________________
Sunday, August 15, 2010
DREAM: Another instalment in my dream lover series... this time he is light brown skinned with East Indian features, and we are literally entwined in a tight embrace (like a pretzel actually!), our young slender bodies together really only the size of one body. We are either married or about to be. Even though the feeling of our love was so big it was like a coccoon around us and so tender it ached, I was insecure when he was apart from me, missing that half of myself sorely.
Then in another scene we (me and my sister?) were planning for September, a monthly group activity (ritual). My mother said, what about a barbeque? I thought it was a great idea and wanted to tell my sister, but then I said, I can make it anytime, but can the boys make it during the week?
Later I was in a circular multi-level mall (with a domed roof?) slowly ascending the escalator that was in the centre of the building (the core) so I could see all the way around. There were merchants working in their stores (like cubicles or stalls, my usual market scene). The lighting is a bit low but comforting. Some guy who was new or inexperienced accidentally pulled a plug (everyone else knew not to do that) and the power went out in the whole place, but I didn’t actually see darkness.
Diametrically across from there was a small group of women sitting low to the ground, working on some kind of traditional female task like shelling peas or something. One of them was praising a famous golfer in town (or in the mall) and mentioned that he was from ‘Passionelle’(?) and another woman immediately said, “Coda, Passionelle.” As if she knew better. And added that he worked and studied on the golf course, and I had the impression that he also had a family to raise. Their tone was full of admiration and pride that he was ‘one of their own’.
DREAMWORK:
As I came up slowly to waking, I asked my body whether this dream in some way answers the question of my last dream, particularly the image of J. taking me to the space below the railway tracks. My body said yes, and this came to me:
We have to get off the fast track, and go off alone to get together.
This is indeed what I have done and what I’ve been doing, but I admit I’m still trying to convince all of myself that this is of the most critical necessity, if what I want most is the deepest healing and growth, as I’ve asked for over and over again. I suppose my ego is still afraid, that I am wasting time, being lazy and self-indulgent, running away from my shadow by retreating from the world... But my dream is showing me how ‘right’ it feels to finally be fully in loving relationship with my masculine, once I could let go of my fear and surrender into the intimacy and union. There is a time for EVERYTHING, and this is the time for retreat and withdrawing from the fast track, the state-of-the-art, high-speed, high-achieving train that’s hurtling into the unknown future, as if it knows its destination. But is that the destination I want?? Is this how I want to get there? I think I’ll take the love below the rails anyday. Mmmm...
Now to today’s dream... still some shadow material (light brown) to work through in my sacred marriage of my masc and fem, but getting closer and closer now. My fear of loss and lack of trust and ‘his’ illusiveness (I am still seeing ‘him’ as a separate entity from my whole self) are still keeping me from total surrender. But I am close, so close, to giving up the fight, as the force of the love becomes more and more powerful with each dream. The pain of separation is also more acute than ever, the urgency is overriding my doubts and any hesitation.
The next part of the dream is another act in this same (serial) play (becoming epic!), but perhaps in a different configuration, the cast of characters being the various parts of my Self, coming together in a monthly (at the new moon?) ritual to share and partake of our relationship. So on the September New Moon (in Virgo) when new initiatives can be conceived and new hopes and wishes propogated, we will have our reunion outdoors in nature, maybe the last one of the summer, and enjoy the fruit and bounty (my mother, the Goddess) of our good work this year so far, prepare ourselves for the big harvest coming in the fall, and start making plans for the coming year. With our collective belly full, mood mellowed, love and goodwill running high, we (all of my family of selves) will be brought closer and into one accord and will.
But my ever-persistent belief that I am separate from all things masculine is still hovering around like a fussing, anxious and self-righteous mother hen, afraid that ‘the boys’ won’t make it, they have failed us before, you know... Clearly my wounded feminine still needs redress, as I am being told twice now in the dream...
The last part of the dream was yet another recurrent theme, of the multi-levelled, multi-celled interior space of my psyche, this time of the semi-conscious. The thought occurs to me that these dreams of ‘browsing’ through the many rooms is really about my lack of purpose and focus, the feeling that I’ve never been able to really sink my teeth into anything in my life. Maybe that’s why I’m always craving for something to chew on, physically (food), emotionally (relationships, real or virtual), mentally (information gathering and learning), and spiritually (practices). I am kept busy 24/7 trying to reach the high tidemark of my satiety.
This one though, is different, because it is circular, the shape of wholeness (roundness) and spiritually aspiring (the space at the top for the dome). I am going up from the core, with a 360˚ view that allowed me to see all the stores, people, and activity. But the escalator did not seemed to stop anywhere along the way, it is only headed up. And even though we all believed we shouldn’t pull out any plug (unplug!), when it happened we did not fall into darkness as we feared. Life went on, and teaching from the feminine came to me in the form of the group of women in their traditional role of nurturing, how they honoured and upheld the masculine value of motivation, perseverance and hardwork, and felt proud to claim him as their own.
Without the competitiveness that makes it a sport, I see golfing as an artform in and of itself. Golfing is an act of creativity, a dance of calculated moves executed with focus and grace, delicately balanced between internal control and being in flow with the greater external elements. The canvas for this art is Nature, landscaped or manufactured, but the artist is still working within the rules and laws of Nature – the wind, the light, the terrain, the time of day, etc. – yet the opportunity is there to take it out to the world, where there is performance and competition for survival, exchange with peers and spectators, a chance for personal recognition, commerce and posterity.
The grand finale (whether or not of this play, it remains to be seen) is the place where this master artist hailed: Coda, Passionelle – Conclusion, Feminine Passion: Creativity – closing act of this particular little melodrama.
A most clarifying, and adamantly edifying, dream... If ever I lose sight as to where all of this inner work is for, this dream delivers the coup de grace to my fears, doubts and anxieties. The message is also unequivocal:
My wound is in the feminine, and I need to allow the masculine to come to her, and heal it.
Until then, my creativity, my true Self and humanness cannot fully manifest.
Stay tuned.
DREAM that J., an old love, was visiting. We were in a house or building with many equal-sized rooms. My brother was there. J. asked for conditioner, and I was determined to be a good hostess. Finally I found some, a small travel-sized one. After that he kept coming back to me to chat. At one point he said, you know sometimes on the railway tracks just below the rails there’s a space? I envisioned this as he said it, acting as if impatient for him to get to the point, but really just playing coy. I would like to take you there some time, he said. I tried to play it cool, but we were undoubtedly flirting. There were lots of people around but I didn’t care.
In the twilight of waking, the thought occurred to me that he must have been born a Cancer. There was always gentle compassion and the willingness to help, even small things, though he had never tried to disguised the other side of his nature, the ambitious go-getter who knows his charm and didn’t hesitate to go after what he wants. But it was the blue aura of melancholy that always had me in its thralls. The Blue Boy, yet another Tubercular. It still gets me in the blood.
DREAMWORK:
Still dreaming and working along the same line of bringing my masc and fem together, one stitch at a time it seems, in this spiritual suturing...
The same question of ‘What does he represent in me’ applies here, I think. And if my brother represents the kindred part of my masculine, then I would say he was here to support and help me, in the background. He (or my sister, when she’s in my dream) would also mean familiarity and safety to me, an environment or situation I knew about or have been in before. Could it also mean that whatever healing comes of it will also heal my family?? It feels so in my body. Back to J...
Physically he was what I would call ‘my type’, his temperament suggested just enough dark mystique – the brooding, melancholic undertone – that seemed to promise a depth and intensity I’ve always found no resistance to. In him I also heard the persistent call to surrender with complete abandon, the only kind of human power that I would willingly submit to at that time. Like bees to honey, moths to flame, iron fillings to magnet. Yet somehow I sensed the mortal demise inherent in succumbing to that spell, as the bees and moths must have too.
He had beautiful hair, as I mentioned, classic picture of a Tubercular – abundant, luxurious and untamed, mad with a feverish desire to create (and procreate), to wring the last drop out of life and leave a mark, knowing that the end is foreshadowed when you burn the candle from both ends. This is the image of Lover as an archetype to me, not how he really was in life.
In the dream he asked for hair conditioner – care and nourishment for his crowning glory. And I think I found just the right one for him – one for travel, the desire and need to travel being a keynote symptom of a Tubercular. It is what drives, and gives them the drive to move as much as they do and as hard as they do, in restless search of what they seek. Whether they know what it is they seek or not is, at least for the moment, irrelevant, for they are compelled from deep within their nature to ‘be on the road’. This is what afflicts me now.
He is, I am, getting ready, for the conditions needed, to hit the road. And I will, or perhaps already have, the requisite conditions.
As I connect the dots in the Tubercular picture of this dream and my waking life, I cannot help but note that in the last couple of months I’ve watched about 2 dozen dvds on travel around the world, and just the last few days since the Algonquin trip, I have been seriously considering travelling at the least our continent in a mobile home, but only brought it out into the open with Michael this morning. I can feel the picture ‘tightening’ up, like we say with a piece of artwork or a project coming together, but in this case the sense of it is deeper in my belly, broad at the base and tapering up the centre of my body.
In the last part of the dream he kept coming back to engage with me, to connect, also to tempt me and draw me out. So I guess my life will be one lived on the road from the point of departure from here. I feel excitement like live wire running in my veins. Is that what ‘wire in the blood’ means??
To keep the ‘romance’ of this kind of life alive, he, my masculine, will return again and again to go off the tracks now and then, and going to the secret hideaway that only he knows, to renew our relationship and our spirit.
The space below the railroad tracks is like a secret hideaway for couples to go and be alone, because they don’t want to be seen together in public. And sometimes the best place to hide is right under its nose.
Railway tracks are the path trains run on, and trains are high-speed collective movers, so railroads are what the masses would choose to travel through their lives on. It’s predictable, tried and true, predetermined, and supposedly safe and comfortable.
I have a feeling I am not getting this one... just skirting the perimeters with the last few paragraphs, and blabbering... need a break...
Took a dose of AURUM C40/4 before bed.
_______________
Saturday, August 14, 2010
It’s been 2 months since I left my job, and it has taken that long for me to really relax into this new way of life, and to become fully aware of how much I have come to love all of what has been happening to me, my relationships (to myself, my body, Michael, our cat Nemo, Nature and the elements, food, art, humanity, to name but a few) and my perspectives. There is a sense of more spaciousness inside myself, as I discovered more spaciousness outside of myself. My life is as simple and as peaceful as it’s ever been, and more and more I catch myself closely examining the preciousness of an ordinary moment in an extraordinary light, and marvel at how I’ve managed to live decades without noticing any of it. Everyday brings a bit more awareness, insight, healing, little pieces of myself is found and brought home, and I can just detect an underground current of strength building quietly in the deep dark of my being.
BATHTUB INSIGHT:
I saw an image of a piece of plum colour swatch, then a sky blue one. The message is: A plum of an opportunity with the sky as its limit will come to me.
I am going to read all of my writing from the last 2 months. I think the bigger picture will have something to tell me as well.
________________
Sunday, August 15, 2010
DREAM: Another instalment in my dream lover series... this time he is light brown skinned with East Indian features, and we are literally entwined in a tight embrace (like a pretzel actually!), our young slender bodies together really only the size of one body. We are either married or about to be. Even though the feeling of our love was so big it was like a coccoon around us and so tender it ached, I was insecure when he was apart from me, missing that half of myself sorely.
Then in another scene we (me and my sister?) were planning for September, a monthly group activity (ritual). My mother said, what about a barbeque? I thought it was a great idea and wanted to tell my sister, but then I said, I can make it anytime, but can the boys make it during the week?
Later I was in a circular multi-level mall (with a domed roof?) slowly ascending the escalator that was in the centre of the building (the core) so I could see all the way around. There were merchants working in their stores (like cubicles or stalls, my usual market scene). The lighting is a bit low but comforting. Some guy who was new or inexperienced accidentally pulled a plug (everyone else knew not to do that) and the power went out in the whole place, but I didn’t actually see darkness.
Diametrically across from there was a small group of women sitting low to the ground, working on some kind of traditional female task like shelling peas or something. One of them was praising a famous golfer in town (or in the mall) and mentioned that he was from ‘Passionelle’(?) and another woman immediately said, “Coda, Passionelle.” As if she knew better. And added that he worked and studied on the golf course, and I had the impression that he also had a family to raise. Their tone was full of admiration and pride that he was ‘one of their own’.
DREAMWORK:
As I came up slowly to waking, I asked my body whether this dream in some way answers the question of my last dream, particularly the image of J. taking me to the space below the railway tracks. My body said yes, and this came to me:
We have to get off the fast track, and go off alone to get together.
This is indeed what I have done and what I’ve been doing, but I admit I’m still trying to convince all of myself that this is of the most critical necessity, if what I want most is the deepest healing and growth, as I’ve asked for over and over again. I suppose my ego is still afraid, that I am wasting time, being lazy and self-indulgent, running away from my shadow by retreating from the world... But my dream is showing me how ‘right’ it feels to finally be fully in loving relationship with my masculine, once I could let go of my fear and surrender into the intimacy and union. There is a time for EVERYTHING, and this is the time for retreat and withdrawing from the fast track, the state-of-the-art, high-speed, high-achieving train that’s hurtling into the unknown future, as if it knows its destination. But is that the destination I want?? Is this how I want to get there? I think I’ll take the love below the rails anyday. Mmmm...
Now to today’s dream... still some shadow material (light brown) to work through in my sacred marriage of my masc and fem, but getting closer and closer now. My fear of loss and lack of trust and ‘his’ illusiveness (I am still seeing ‘him’ as a separate entity from my whole self) are still keeping me from total surrender. But I am close, so close, to giving up the fight, as the force of the love becomes more and more powerful with each dream. The pain of separation is also more acute than ever, the urgency is overriding my doubts and any hesitation.
The next part of the dream is another act in this same (serial) play (becoming epic!), but perhaps in a different configuration, the cast of characters being the various parts of my Self, coming together in a monthly (at the new moon?) ritual to share and partake of our relationship. So on the September New Moon (in Virgo) when new initiatives can be conceived and new hopes and wishes propogated, we will have our reunion outdoors in nature, maybe the last one of the summer, and enjoy the fruit and bounty (my mother, the Goddess) of our good work this year so far, prepare ourselves for the big harvest coming in the fall, and start making plans for the coming year. With our collective belly full, mood mellowed, love and goodwill running high, we (all of my family of selves) will be brought closer and into one accord and will.
But my ever-persistent belief that I am separate from all things masculine is still hovering around like a fussing, anxious and self-righteous mother hen, afraid that ‘the boys’ won’t make it, they have failed us before, you know... Clearly my wounded feminine still needs redress, as I am being told twice now in the dream...
The last part of the dream was yet another recurrent theme, of the multi-levelled, multi-celled interior space of my psyche, this time of the semi-conscious. The thought occurs to me that these dreams of ‘browsing’ through the many rooms is really about my lack of purpose and focus, the feeling that I’ve never been able to really sink my teeth into anything in my life. Maybe that’s why I’m always craving for something to chew on, physically (food), emotionally (relationships, real or virtual), mentally (information gathering and learning), and spiritually (practices). I am kept busy 24/7 trying to reach the high tidemark of my satiety.
This one though, is different, because it is circular, the shape of wholeness (roundness) and spiritually aspiring (the space at the top for the dome). I am going up from the core, with a 360˚ view that allowed me to see all the stores, people, and activity. But the escalator did not seemed to stop anywhere along the way, it is only headed up. And even though we all believed we shouldn’t pull out any plug (unplug!), when it happened we did not fall into darkness as we feared. Life went on, and teaching from the feminine came to me in the form of the group of women in their traditional role of nurturing, how they honoured and upheld the masculine value of motivation, perseverance and hardwork, and felt proud to claim him as their own.
Without the competitiveness that makes it a sport, I see golfing as an artform in and of itself. Golfing is an act of creativity, a dance of calculated moves executed with focus and grace, delicately balanced between internal control and being in flow with the greater external elements. The canvas for this art is Nature, landscaped or manufactured, but the artist is still working within the rules and laws of Nature – the wind, the light, the terrain, the time of day, etc. – yet the opportunity is there to take it out to the world, where there is performance and competition for survival, exchange with peers and spectators, a chance for personal recognition, commerce and posterity.
The grand finale (whether or not of this play, it remains to be seen) is the place where this master artist hailed: Coda, Passionelle – Conclusion, Feminine Passion: Creativity – closing act of this particular little melodrama.
A most clarifying, and adamantly edifying, dream... If ever I lose sight as to where all of this inner work is for, this dream delivers the coup de grace to my fears, doubts and anxieties. The message is also unequivocal:
My wound is in the feminine, and I need to allow the masculine to come to her, and heal it.
Until then, my creativity, my true Self and humanness cannot fully manifest.
Stay tuned.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
The Jaded Eye
Last night before sleep I asked my dreams to help me with rebuilding my confidence, my willingness and readiness to go out and be in the world...
DREAM that I had a pinhole in my right eye, with tiny serrated edges like a star, so some kind of fluid could get in... another image was of 4 contact lenses in a holding container... ‘my guy’ was with me...
Then I was lying in bed looking up at a window high up on the wall, and I could see an SUV drive up the ramp on the side of the house next door. A shaven black guy was driving it. He parked the car and looked at me. I tried to wave to him but I could barely lift my arm (left). I wondered how the floor could support the weight of a car.
Then I was inside a dimly lit apartment of a young, slender Chinese guy who was a teacher to a handful of small boys. They were running around in the apartment. My sister was with me. There was a toy sheep or some kind of small pet on a side table or counter, and I gave it some kibbles I found. The guy came over and pushed against the left side of my hip so I’m held tight between him and the counter, but only one side of our bodies are touching. He did this somewhat covertly but I knew he wanted to be intimate...
DREAMWORK:
First part, I need to allow the emotional content of what I see sink in, with all of its potential to radiate in unknown directions and force, ups and downs, it is all still following a cosmic order and pattern. I don’t need to fear it going out of control or overwhelming me. (Interestingly I just watched the Japanese movie “Warm Water Under the Red Bridge” last night.) Now that I can let the waters of my emotions out, I must be able to first take it in, with the inner discerning eye, without losing the child-like way of seeing wonderment and awe, instead of seeing with the outer eye and immediately judging, censoring, and often not even noticing the baby in the bath water.
The Jaded Eye (exhaustus oculus?): a modern malaise.
Interesting that ‘exhausted’ means spent, drained. My eye which is drained of emotion – namely compassion; the dispassionate eye that sees the world of humanity, with dry distain. It is merely my ego’s attempt in distancing itself from lower human nature, thumbing its nose to say, “I’m not violent or destructive or ignorant. See? I’m better than the rest of my kind.” Of course, behind that posturing is my great fear of pain, the pain in confronting that violent, destructive and undifferentiated darkness in myself.
To allow the great tears and grief of humanity to flow into me, to receive it through a new (reversed) way of seeing, with an emotional clarity that can penetrate and most of all, connect all of this movement and transcendant numinosity to my head, mind, intellect. Finally.
The 4 contact lenses soaking in solution... my eyes, each with inner and outer vision, all 4 needing corrective measures (lenses), cleansing, and freshening, for a spell, so that I can see the world in a new way, as if through new eyes. I make the intention now to close and rest my mind’s eyes for the next while, and allow this transformation to happen.
Lying on my bed inside a dark bedroom lit only with daylight that came throught the high window... I think I was a child in that part of the dream, about 8. The window – still about seeing – but a higher seeing, aspiring in a way, at someone else’s self (house), and how he (the masculine of that self) had built a ramp (a path) with a space (a resting place, a home) to keep his drive integrated into the self. I wanted badly to connect to him, but my own resistance – the sluggishness in my arm – prevented me from succeeding.
In the mix is also my fear that the world is a dangerous place, that even the ground under our feet, or under our car, may not support us. This is a phobia of mine, hidden in the Shadow of my Animus (the clean cut black guy), and where power and drive will come out of for me. Come to think of it, my sense of safety and protection from external harm has mostly come from my mother, the powerful feminine, not from my father, whose influence was comparatively absent in my childhood. Balancing this will lead to the gold that will be the source of my strength and all that I feel lacking in dealing with the outside world. What I need to heal this, now that attention has been brought to it, is care, nurture, growth and eventually maturity (I lost that drive and confidence in myself when I was about 8, after the shock of realizing I’m not always going to be #1). Part of that healing, I think, is coming from the next part of the dream...
Back in the darker recesses of my unconscious, the young masculine in me is being guided and fathered by my ancestral spirit, though its appearance and influence is not overly masculine, but innate and no less enticing. He projected a humble, meek, and endearing persona (the little toy sheep), winsome and disarming to the feminine heart, which cannot help but want to feed and nurture it. Perhaps emboldened by this, he made it plain his desire for closeness, for union – be attached at the hip – and playfully but with enough force, to tell me that I am wanted, I am captive, and there is no escape from this ultimate Oneness within myself.
My Shadow Sister, though, was there, hovering around the periphery as she often does in my dreams, and I could sense the faint odour of her disapproval. She does not approve of this ‘relationship’ because I/we will have to give up a piece of our ego in exchange, the piece that my ego identifies as my individuality, my independence from the tyranny of patriarchal rule, which is sometimes difficult to separate from the masculine overall when there’s a power struggle going on. My ego is reluctant to give up the struggle that separates (is individuation necessarily a separation?) for the sake of reconciling the split between the feminine and masculine.
At this point I must admit that my own prejudice against all things masculine comes from my (mis)perception that ‘all men are harmful’, particularly reinforced by my Western upbringing. Eastern and Oriental men somehow much less representative of that to me. They are less reeking of testosterone and the implicit aggressiveness and destructiveness, although through the eyes of my superiority complex and immaturity I saw that as a weakness.
What is true virility? Perhaps I need more understanding of this.
DREAM that I had a pinhole in my right eye, with tiny serrated edges like a star, so some kind of fluid could get in... another image was of 4 contact lenses in a holding container... ‘my guy’ was with me...
Then I was lying in bed looking up at a window high up on the wall, and I could see an SUV drive up the ramp on the side of the house next door. A shaven black guy was driving it. He parked the car and looked at me. I tried to wave to him but I could barely lift my arm (left). I wondered how the floor could support the weight of a car.
Then I was inside a dimly lit apartment of a young, slender Chinese guy who was a teacher to a handful of small boys. They were running around in the apartment. My sister was with me. There was a toy sheep or some kind of small pet on a side table or counter, and I gave it some kibbles I found. The guy came over and pushed against the left side of my hip so I’m held tight between him and the counter, but only one side of our bodies are touching. He did this somewhat covertly but I knew he wanted to be intimate...
DREAMWORK:
First part, I need to allow the emotional content of what I see sink in, with all of its potential to radiate in unknown directions and force, ups and downs, it is all still following a cosmic order and pattern. I don’t need to fear it going out of control or overwhelming me. (Interestingly I just watched the Japanese movie “Warm Water Under the Red Bridge” last night.) Now that I can let the waters of my emotions out, I must be able to first take it in, with the inner discerning eye, without losing the child-like way of seeing wonderment and awe, instead of seeing with the outer eye and immediately judging, censoring, and often not even noticing the baby in the bath water.
The Jaded Eye (exhaustus oculus?): a modern malaise.
Interesting that ‘exhausted’ means spent, drained. My eye which is drained of emotion – namely compassion; the dispassionate eye that sees the world of humanity, with dry distain. It is merely my ego’s attempt in distancing itself from lower human nature, thumbing its nose to say, “I’m not violent or destructive or ignorant. See? I’m better than the rest of my kind.” Of course, behind that posturing is my great fear of pain, the pain in confronting that violent, destructive and undifferentiated darkness in myself.
To allow the great tears and grief of humanity to flow into me, to receive it through a new (reversed) way of seeing, with an emotional clarity that can penetrate and most of all, connect all of this movement and transcendant numinosity to my head, mind, intellect. Finally.
The 4 contact lenses soaking in solution... my eyes, each with inner and outer vision, all 4 needing corrective measures (lenses), cleansing, and freshening, for a spell, so that I can see the world in a new way, as if through new eyes. I make the intention now to close and rest my mind’s eyes for the next while, and allow this transformation to happen.
Lying on my bed inside a dark bedroom lit only with daylight that came throught the high window... I think I was a child in that part of the dream, about 8. The window – still about seeing – but a higher seeing, aspiring in a way, at someone else’s self (house), and how he (the masculine of that self) had built a ramp (a path) with a space (a resting place, a home) to keep his drive integrated into the self. I wanted badly to connect to him, but my own resistance – the sluggishness in my arm – prevented me from succeeding.
In the mix is also my fear that the world is a dangerous place, that even the ground under our feet, or under our car, may not support us. This is a phobia of mine, hidden in the Shadow of my Animus (the clean cut black guy), and where power and drive will come out of for me. Come to think of it, my sense of safety and protection from external harm has mostly come from my mother, the powerful feminine, not from my father, whose influence was comparatively absent in my childhood. Balancing this will lead to the gold that will be the source of my strength and all that I feel lacking in dealing with the outside world. What I need to heal this, now that attention has been brought to it, is care, nurture, growth and eventually maturity (I lost that drive and confidence in myself when I was about 8, after the shock of realizing I’m not always going to be #1). Part of that healing, I think, is coming from the next part of the dream...
Back in the darker recesses of my unconscious, the young masculine in me is being guided and fathered by my ancestral spirit, though its appearance and influence is not overly masculine, but innate and no less enticing. He projected a humble, meek, and endearing persona (the little toy sheep), winsome and disarming to the feminine heart, which cannot help but want to feed and nurture it. Perhaps emboldened by this, he made it plain his desire for closeness, for union – be attached at the hip – and playfully but with enough force, to tell me that I am wanted, I am captive, and there is no escape from this ultimate Oneness within myself.
My Shadow Sister, though, was there, hovering around the periphery as she often does in my dreams, and I could sense the faint odour of her disapproval. She does not approve of this ‘relationship’ because I/we will have to give up a piece of our ego in exchange, the piece that my ego identifies as my individuality, my independence from the tyranny of patriarchal rule, which is sometimes difficult to separate from the masculine overall when there’s a power struggle going on. My ego is reluctant to give up the struggle that separates (is individuation necessarily a separation?) for the sake of reconciling the split between the feminine and masculine.
At this point I must admit that my own prejudice against all things masculine comes from my (mis)perception that ‘all men are harmful’, particularly reinforced by my Western upbringing. Eastern and Oriental men somehow much less representative of that to me. They are less reeking of testosterone and the implicit aggressiveness and destructiveness, although through the eyes of my superiority complex and immaturity I saw that as a weakness.
What is true virility? Perhaps I need more understanding of this.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
In My Living Room
DREAM that I was living with 3 other women, one of them was Vivi. We were sitting in the living room and I noticed that the red circular couch had been replaced with a normal rectangular one, but the metal pole that used to be in the centre of the circular one is still sticking up in between 2 of the cushions of the rectangular one. Apparently the old one was swapped and stolen, by soldiers who were billetted there. I felt indignant about this.
Later we went in to eat and there was an enormous banquet of food that nearly filled the room. There might have been an adjacent room as well. Lots of people were already lined up getting food. Dishes covered the entire table. I looked at one chicken dish closest to me and thought there must have been 20 chicken dishes of various kinds that people had brought. I was poking around in the chicken that looked as if it was made with a dark marinade like soysauce, unsure which cut of the meat I wanted.
At another point we were back in the living room, on another day I think, and the rectangular couch was gone, leaving just empty floor. I looked at the patio doors and figured they must have opened that in the night and moved it out that way. There were several other couches around the room, each one different. This is a very social room, I thought.
DREAMWORK:
4 women, the perfect feminine world and harmonious company, 4 being the number of the feminine. The thing that jumps out from this dream most readily is the theme of ‘socialness’, Vivi being the quintessential hostess and social butterfly, the living room, the many couches, the sharing of food and shelter and company.
Soldiers, are conformed representatives of masculine power, order, rule, and collective, a potential threat (as patriarchy) to the wellbeing of the feminine and therefore the whole. They have stolen the centrepiece of the feminine domain, the red circular couch that was the throne the 4 women can sit around and see in all directions. The pole in the centre was the stake of their territory, meant to be of significance and permanence. But the power-mongering patriarchal forces have abused the goodwill of the feminine who put them up (and put up with them), and replaced that symbol of feminine power with something ordinary. But the core of that power, the metal stake, could not be denied nor hidden, it stays.
All of this took place in the openness of society, and as women, we seem to accept the takeover as commonplace – totally socially acceptable, because that’s the way it’s always been. Masculine aggression, feminine passivity – it is a balance of a sort. But when does the table turn, as the yin rises and the yang ebbs, and natural rhythm and balance prevail? The feminine wisdom is also patient and enduring and timeless, though she knows her time is approaching, and the two arms of justice will move into equilibrium.
Within the feminine nature is also the energy of abundance and communal sharing, a time of gathering and celebration, of thanksgiving and social nurture. The feeling is expansive and exuberant, pleasure and sensuality are heightened, spirits and hearts are uplifted and we are all inexorably connected and bonded by flesh and blood. In sharing we leave behind our fear of hunger and deprivation, of carrying the responsibility of survival alone, the illusion of blackest isolation that threatens to swallow us whole.
This is, I suppose, is the darker undertone of the joyful event, that there is always a shadow side, something we are not yet ready to acknowledge. It is the high that breaks the monotony of the low, which precedes the celebratory high, and will return again on its heel. Life is a grind, and the harvest is always just a temporary reprieve, until we are able to take that expansiveness and gratitude into the ordinary everyday, and celebrate the small moments of life that surely do come along.
In the last part of the dream, even the ‘usurper’ is gone, the soldiers took back the replacement couch, but didn’t take any other in the room. The aggressive and invasive influences have gone, under the cover of night, for this is not the exercise of masculine power that rightly belongs in the light of day, the magnanimous, kind and just Father/King, but the unscrupulous, greedy thieves of the other extreme – masculine power out of control.
But we are consoled when we can see that the world of our societies is indeed a big enough place to hold even the likes of such destructiveness, that there are many more social groups that can be formed, from all walks of life, and dialogues and energy can be exchanged, alliances and mutuality tempered. This is the way human society can be restructured to wholeness. The way of Social Reform. And it starts inside of me, in the inner living room, inside of each of us.
Later we went in to eat and there was an enormous banquet of food that nearly filled the room. There might have been an adjacent room as well. Lots of people were already lined up getting food. Dishes covered the entire table. I looked at one chicken dish closest to me and thought there must have been 20 chicken dishes of various kinds that people had brought. I was poking around in the chicken that looked as if it was made with a dark marinade like soysauce, unsure which cut of the meat I wanted.
At another point we were back in the living room, on another day I think, and the rectangular couch was gone, leaving just empty floor. I looked at the patio doors and figured they must have opened that in the night and moved it out that way. There were several other couches around the room, each one different. This is a very social room, I thought.
DREAMWORK:
4 women, the perfect feminine world and harmonious company, 4 being the number of the feminine. The thing that jumps out from this dream most readily is the theme of ‘socialness’, Vivi being the quintessential hostess and social butterfly, the living room, the many couches, the sharing of food and shelter and company.
Soldiers, are conformed representatives of masculine power, order, rule, and collective, a potential threat (as patriarchy) to the wellbeing of the feminine and therefore the whole. They have stolen the centrepiece of the feminine domain, the red circular couch that was the throne the 4 women can sit around and see in all directions. The pole in the centre was the stake of their territory, meant to be of significance and permanence. But the power-mongering patriarchal forces have abused the goodwill of the feminine who put them up (and put up with them), and replaced that symbol of feminine power with something ordinary. But the core of that power, the metal stake, could not be denied nor hidden, it stays.
All of this took place in the openness of society, and as women, we seem to accept the takeover as commonplace – totally socially acceptable, because that’s the way it’s always been. Masculine aggression, feminine passivity – it is a balance of a sort. But when does the table turn, as the yin rises and the yang ebbs, and natural rhythm and balance prevail? The feminine wisdom is also patient and enduring and timeless, though she knows her time is approaching, and the two arms of justice will move into equilibrium.
Within the feminine nature is also the energy of abundance and communal sharing, a time of gathering and celebration, of thanksgiving and social nurture. The feeling is expansive and exuberant, pleasure and sensuality are heightened, spirits and hearts are uplifted and we are all inexorably connected and bonded by flesh and blood. In sharing we leave behind our fear of hunger and deprivation, of carrying the responsibility of survival alone, the illusion of blackest isolation that threatens to swallow us whole.
This is, I suppose, is the darker undertone of the joyful event, that there is always a shadow side, something we are not yet ready to acknowledge. It is the high that breaks the monotony of the low, which precedes the celebratory high, and will return again on its heel. Life is a grind, and the harvest is always just a temporary reprieve, until we are able to take that expansiveness and gratitude into the ordinary everyday, and celebrate the small moments of life that surely do come along.
In the last part of the dream, even the ‘usurper’ is gone, the soldiers took back the replacement couch, but didn’t take any other in the room. The aggressive and invasive influences have gone, under the cover of night, for this is not the exercise of masculine power that rightly belongs in the light of day, the magnanimous, kind and just Father/King, but the unscrupulous, greedy thieves of the other extreme – masculine power out of control.
But we are consoled when we can see that the world of our societies is indeed a big enough place to hold even the likes of such destructiveness, that there are many more social groups that can be formed, from all walks of life, and dialogues and energy can be exchanged, alliances and mutuality tempered. This is the way human society can be restructured to wholeness. The way of Social Reform. And it starts inside of me, in the inner living room, inside of each of us.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Catching up on dreamzzz...
Sunday, Aug. 1, 2010
DREAM: Another amorous episode... clearly there’s something I’m not getting yet...
I am on Donlands Ave. near Strathmore Blvd. where I used to live. Near the corner my family (business) has a construction site, excavating. I am just passing by but Roman, an old acquaintance – another honey-blonde, shows up. He offers to carry my bags for me, gentleman that he is. He took the bag closest to him, it’s a lunch bag kind of thing, and I said, this is the heavy one, indicating the laptop bag I have strapped across my body. He took that too.
We continued down the sidewalk to where the house I lived in was directly across the street, and laid down on a quilt or comforter that’s spread between 2 parked cars (there’s no parking on that side of the street in real life). He embraced me and I surrendered myself to the intimacy, though it was not yet sexual. Then it got late and I said I have to go home. I picked up the comforter and my bags and something else – I remember carrying 4 things. The comforter was dragging a bit on the ground so I had to adjust it.
I got to the bus stop – this part is vague now – and somehow went up another level so I could get to the top deck of the bus.
I got off and while walking I took out my cellphone to call my mother – it was my first cellphone, a silver Panasonic – but I heard a couple of messages she left for me instead. The first one was a bit cold and resentful, something about grampa, the second one was quite excited and animated but I can’t remember what about...
DREAMWORK:
While still in the twilight state, another little pebble dropped into the pool of my consciousness, a word: STAGNATION – and I knew that’s what the ‘matter’ is, what’s in the Shadow, and what my weight gain is about, as it had been before the last time I gained this much weight. Don’t know how I could have forgotten. I think my dream brought this to the surface for me because I had just gotten married when we moved to Strathmore, and my ‘descent’ into darkness officially began. This eventually led to a state of stagnation on all levels about 10 years later. I still remember looking at the pictures of a vacation I took with my sister in the Bahamas, and having to admit to myself how ‘big’ I had gotten, and worse, how masculinized I had become. I was totally stuck in life, sucked down into the quagmire of my bitterness, hatred, rage and utter despair. It was there that I began to give up on life, and stagnation began to set in.
The family business was digging for its roots and building something new on Donlands near Strathmore because I, my parents and grampa have all lived there for many years, and this change is starting with us – me, grampa, then my parents. At the moment I still see myself as a distant observer, a passerby, a satellite orbiting my family at a comfortable distance, but inside I sense things have begun shifting without my knowing.
My Animus comes along and gallantly offers to carry my burden for me, lunchbox and laptop, I guess I was coming home from work. We got to where it all began, the stagnation of Sepia, across the street from 97 Strathmore, so there’s a little distance, a bit of objectivity, and healing can begin. For it was there that my marriage began its downward spiral in earnesty, and the split in me got bigger rather quickly. I came to hate men with as pure a passion as I’ve ever felt but it was the masculine in myself that I truly despised – the aggression, the violence, the destructiveness without remorse. Men were the convenient target of my projections. So now my gentle, tender, and melancholic masculine in the form of Roman has come to mend the residual effects of that time, the grief and sadness that would have overwhelmed me if I had allowed it to surface, or so my psyche believed. I am now on a different track (across the street in line with other cars), in sight of where the grief began but not in it anymore.
But I supposed my work is not yet complete, I still had to go home to Mother... and grampa...
Feeling as if I cannot concentrate well enough to do this dreamwork right now... still murky...
_____________
Monday, August 2, 2010 – begin MasterCleanse fast today
DREAM: I am in a work environment beside a large, long table, size of a boardroom table but just plain dark wood, more like a worktable. There are small displays on it, brochure stands, pamphlets and such in neat piles. I am looking for vacation destinations that employees are allowed to choose, as if they are company-sponsored. The first one was Crystal Palace, but I knew this is not the one. Then I came around the table and heard or saw the name ‘Isnae! Isnae!’ and knew that that’s the one. I think Nancie was there too. A business card caught my eye so I picked it up, though I don’t remember now if it was for ‘Isnae! Isnae!’, looked at the design and really liked it. It was a bit shorter than the regular 3.5” long, vertical format with rounded corners and a bronzy colour. A white band of italic type across the middle, like space for a tagline, information in text on the top, and a map on the bottom. Double-sided so there was a picture on the bottom instead of the map. I was very impressed by how the designer managed to make such good use of the space to fit so much information, and with such lovely design sense. I took a card.
DREAMWORK:
Still about work, though this time about taking a break from it, but not actually leaving the employment. I guess that shows improvement on how I feel about work, that I don’t have to sever all ties. It’s a reflection of how much fear I feel about being out in the world. I need to heal this fear.
The dream company is a friendly one, not trying to impress by ostentatiousness, but caring about employees enough to sponsor vacations for them. Crystal Palace I rejected outright, because it gives me the impression of a bingo hall, something pedestrian, a mainstream choice. The kind of place I think Nancie would choose, or at least I like to think so.
_________
I have an image of myself, standing as if on a hilltop, calmly surveying the vista before me. Scattered across the landsacpe before me are countless scenes of my life, each one being reenacted on its own little stage concurrently, all together displaying a gallery of mini-theatrics. What does this image tell me? If I take a step closer, I begin to sense that each scene is a story complete in itself, even as it is a part of a whole – my life. Each is a small gem, sometimes uncut, but always exquisite with details and its own glory. Strung together, I hold a necklace of the rich and meanful moments of my life. The stories are told simply, lightly, and honestly, above a pure and steady white flame, regardless of the gravity of the subject matter. Most of these stories are of my wounds and healing.
___________
BATHTUB INSIGHTS:
Q: What do you feel compelled to do? List.
My work is to heal consciousness, that is, to heal what’s already emerged, not what’s still in the unconscious. Of couse, I have to heal my own consciousness first, to the degree that I am ready to help heal other consciousnesses. I see an image of a lozenge shaped, ivory white stone, flat on top, as if cut with a machine, though there isn’t a sharpe edge anywhere. It is submerged in water, sitting on the bottom of a pool quietly. I pick it up and hold it flat against my left cheek, and I could feel a cool spread of energy coming into me from the stone. I hold it against little Ana’s cheek, and ask Source to heal whatever in her consciousness needs healing. But I know I am not quite ready to do this work yet, my own work is still the focus right now. I will be ready by February next year.
___________
Now I’m lying in bed... My body has something to tell me: Make young art. But I don’t feel that I know how... Make art from a place that’s primitive, exuberant, uninhibited, straight from the gut, without artifice. It is a state of being more so than just physically letting loose and making art. And though my mind does not have a clue how to get to that state, I know that my body knows. So I shall trust and beseech my body to take me there.
Somehow this touches off something that’s lurking in the shadows – the knowing that I have never deepened into anything in my life so far, never persevered into expertise in anything I’ve pursued, art & design, homeopathy, various healing modalities, nutrition, management, and now I’m starting something new again... Is it because I lack the stick-to-it-ness, or that I am simply potentially mediocre, or that I just haven’t found the thing I love doing?? My head insists that the answer is yes to all 3 parts, but my body says it is only the latter.
So it has taken all of my life to find what I love doing, even though I was born with that knowledge... well, hopefully I am just coming full circle to that... more like a spiral, as I keep coming up to the same landmarks over and over, but always with a different self, having gained and lost, grown and diminished, bearing new wounds and scars of healing, thus coming to face another level in myself. This is the phenomenon of the healing spiral.
“Man is free only when he is doing what the deepest self likes, and knowing what the deepest self likes, ah! that takes some diving.” ~ D.H. Lawrence.
It occurs to me that I really am a squirrel (I’ve had several dreams in the past involving squirrels). I collect whatever is my object of desire at the time, as many/much as I can ‘carry’, or more, and I stash it away for some indefinite future when I might dig it out and allow it to serve some of its original purpose, though I would say more often than not, this purpose does not manifest in fulfillment. Either I forget I have it, or I lose interest in it, or I’ve moved on from my need of it. I am but a transient collector; true collectors seek meaning in what they collect. I am a greedy, graspy, wasteful little squirrel, driven to frenetic activity by fear of hunger, afraid that I might have to do without.
The healing: (imagine holding healing stone to my forehead) TRUST in the universe to always provide for me, as it has. DISCERNMENT in knowing ‘what’ I need and ‘how much’ I need, no more, no less. Replenishment comes with the next season, the next opportunity, as it has always. There is also something ancestral in this pattern of mine. I hold the stone to my heart, because I can feel the great many heartbreaks my ancestors have endured, believing they had been forsaken by God and mankind. Then down to my belly, all the powerlessness, hopelessness, and the raging hunger that killed. I can hear the howling rage in my mind that went on and on... So much healing is needed.
I want to have a memorial to my ancestors for what they have suffered for the perpetuation of our lineage, the sacrifices they have made of themselves to sustain life. A dragon carved in black jade as a pendant that I can wear. (Is there such thing as black jade?) Found several online, including Etsy.
___________
Thursday, August 5, 2010
DREAM that a young boy had drowned in his bed/bathtub (it was shaped like a bed but had water in it instead of a mattress. I think he was naked. He was tall and thin and very pale, no more than 10 or 12 y.o. I opened the bedroom door and saw him and freaked out. Another girl was with me. I started to bawl unconsolably from the shock but did not go near the body. I have the feeling that he was related to the other girl, although she did not show any grief even as she went to the body which had to be unfolded, because it was actually folded in half very neatly and flat. I don’t have a sense whether he killed himself or accidentally drowned.
DREAMWORK: (during the drive up to Algonquin)
It was probably around that pre-adolescent age that we started to think aobut what we want to be when we grow up, when it began to have a glimmer of reality. And even though I had been a high-achiever in childhood, I was beginning to fall off my pedestal incrementally as the grades go up, so that by grade 6, which is the grade before ‘middle’ school in Taiwan, I was ranking in the 20s – a far cry from the days when I ranked first or second in class. I think my confidence in myself really took a dive, and worse, there was no one for me to talk to about it. Not that I would have wanted to talk about it, I was too busy trying to hide it. This hiding developed into my greatest survival mechanism – to pretend I am a success at all cost – the big cover-up. But somewhere inside myself I’ve always felt a tiny twinge, like a line of mouse type used in a disclaimer, the words: The Great Pretender. And I know, eventually, when I could face it a few years ago, that this was me.
The cost? Was the growth and development of my Animus – the young boy. Instead, I grew and cultivated the persona of a tough, cold and indifferent bitch-on-wheels, so that I could compete and make my way in the world of patriarchal rule. I cut off my feelings as much as I could, and only allowed anger to show, the rest I considered a sign of weakness, which had no place in a man’s world. So the young, sensitive, growing masculine had to be hidden away like a deformed offspring, starved and stunted from neglect and denial, and finally, drowned in the cold water of my apathy and indifference.
I have worn this façade of indifference for so long that I was not even aware of this death in myself. It is only when my unconscious was brought face to face with it in this dream that I was hit with the shock and grief of what has happened, that I mourned the loss of this essential part of myself.
My shadow, the other girl, is the one who can help me revive this dead part. She has unfolded the body, and healing is now possible. She will bring to him the tender loving care and nurture and sustenance that he needs. As for me, my ego-self, I resolve to surrender that hardened exterior, the Great Pretender, and allow my authentic self, along with all of its feelings to express themselves in the light of day.
I thank you, Source and my dreams, for this great healing.
___________
Friday, August 6, 2010
DREAM that I am sitting on the floor of a second storey with my legs hanging over the edge of the building because there is no wall or railing. I am writing in a notebook with a blue fountain pen. I could look out and see nearby below there were buskers performing. One guy was singing Latin songs, then an oriental man joined in with guitar I think, then someone started playing a drum.
Out of the corner of my vision I see a dog walk by, then a voice said, ‘So you are santa maria’, at the same time I looked up to see R., an ex-boyfriend, in front of me. As soon as I heard the voice I knew who it was. He was dressed all in light blue denim and seemed a bit slighter in build than I remembered him. I glanced up at him but didn’t say anything. My first thought was that I didn’t look particularly good just then, no make-up or hair done. I saw that there were bright blue ink stains on the right side of my pinkish salmon skirt, a skirt I have in real life. I felt slightly agitated then...
DREAMWORK:
I seemed not be afraid to hang over the edge anymore, even if it is only the second storey. I’ve come down to the ground, at least with the more personal and emotional stuff (blue ink), able to be honest enough to express it. I think the way Michael and I have been able to talk about some of our ancient history, things we’ve forgotten about and things we haven’t wanted to even talk to ourselves about, yesterday and today since we started our cleanse as well as this trip to Algonquin, has brought me to this new level of expression and groundedness that’s reflected in this part of the dream. I can now see clearly and distinctly the 3 centres in myself – the 3 musicians – and how they’ve come together: the heart songs joined by the head accompaniment and last but not least important, the body rhythm and pulse that is foundational to my whole being. The 3 are finally performing together, making the beautiful music that is creativity. I sincerely hope that means it will soon manifest in my life.
Santa Maria being Spanish has the colour of romance and passion to me, light blue being the colour of Mary, who is the personification of the Feminine God – Goddess – to me, is also the source of creativity. R. being my Animus in my dream, and who in real life meant the first awakening of love and passion to me, has come to tell me that this is who I am, who I’ve become. The weight of my relationship with him has certainly become lighter as I’ve worked through the many layers. I feel I’m very nearly there in the healing of this particular relationship.
I saw his dog first, though briefly, before I heard his voice, as if to give me a swift warning or clue that this is about love as emotional attachment, because that is what that dog represents. I need Eros in my life because it feeds creativity. I need to be in love with my own masculine, feel the kind of passion and romantic force of energy that overtakes me completely, splits me wide open so that I can do nothing but surrender, and as much as any of us fear the loss of control, I would throw myself over its cliff over and over again. The ecstasy of total abandon, of utter surrender. Fall madly in love with my Self. This to me is an inherent state of Goddess nature, and I long to be there.
But my first reaction was one of shame and unworthiness in the dream, that I’m not desirable enough to attract him, my masculine. This negative body image I have remains a wound in my feminine. The dream is telling me to allow my masculine emotion – anger – to spill, to be expressed – onto my feminine, the bright pink skirt, to blur the line a little between what I believe to be masculine expressions and what I believe to be feminine, that they really come from the same places: the 3 centres creating together, passionately, freely, and ecstatically.
But I became agitated, fearful when I am confronted with the possibility of unleashing raw masculine energy on the feminine, for although I can now discern between masculinity and patriarchy, I have not forgiven what patriarchy has done to the feminine. I need to forgive, and embrace. This is what needs healing now.
Patriarchy is a hurt, angry little boy crying for his mom. I will go to sleep now with this image in my mind.
_____________
Monday, August 9, 2010 – New Moon
Haven’t been able to remember my dreams for the last few days, except for a tiny but persistent feeling that keeps bringing me back to a dream from last week, the one of the death of my young masculine self. When I went into it this morning I realized that my work on it is unfinished, for he is still dead, dead to the world. I have not yet recovered myself from the shock and grief of the discovery to complete the soul retrieval. I know that it is the Goddess, the Great Feminine who can heal this wound of mine, and she has come in the form of the Shadow girl in the dream, the girl who unfolded the body and lifted it out of the water, while I stood rooted to the spot and lost control.
I ask her now to please come to me, I need her too. She comes over and folds me in her arms. I noticed that she has black wavy hair that is tied back. Suddenly I felt her belly sticking into me, I pull back and ask her, are you pregnant?
She smiles, yes.
Is it a boy or girl? I said.
Both, she said.
Twins!
So to speak! mischief in her smile.
Then she leads me by the hand to the body of the young boy. She kneels down on the ground and sits holding him in her lap. I am now reminded of Mary holding the dead body of Jesus after his body was taken down from the cross. I ask, why was his body folded in half? Because you did not want to face him, she replies. Oh.
She pulls me gently down and guides me to hold the body with her, the three of us in a hug. I was a bit afraid to touch him, imagining that it would feel like the skin of an amphibian. In fact it was cool but dry. Then she picks him up as if he weighs nothing, gets up and puts him down on a higher bed, like a massage table covered by a sheet. She folds the sheet around him and I realized that she is making a shroud. When he is completely wrapped she picks up the body again and carries it out of the room. We come into the living room, empty except for a long table in the middle. And there she lays him down, and I knew we are going to have wake for him. Steadily and quietly, people started coming in, all moving slowly. These are all the parts of myself, my selves, my personae, my Shadow selves – my people. One by one they come up to the body, some kiss him, some caress him, some cry over him, all are tender and loving. Then one puts his head down on his chest, and proclaims, I hear a heartbeat! I don’t know whether to believe that, but the crowd was awed.
With that, we hold hands and form circle around circle around circle around the body, and begin to dance and chant in unison, ‘Hoo-hah! Hoo-hah! Hoo-hah!’ I was amazed that there were so many parts of myself that I couldn’t hardly see the end of the crowd, and as I marveled a knowing came to me, ‘We are of thee.’ But why ‘thee’, my mind asks. Because my ancestors are here too, on the outer rings, protecting me. And I realized that the Goddess is there, on the outermost circle, her arms super-stretched half way around the circle, her hands holding the hands of God, her Consort. So He is here too. I am in the presence of the Great Collective of Life. Even when I think I am alone, I am not.
Suddenly the dance stops and in unison we raise our hands in the air and wave: Hooooo! Then point our fingertips toward the body in the centre: Haaah! – reminding me of the Monkey Dance of the Balinese. Wave/point and chant is repeated 10 times, then everything stops. In the stillness I can see the shroud begins to move, the body is trying to push its way out. A low murmur spreads through the crowd. Finally he spreads his arms out of the cloth and emerges. His colour has deepened, all over, his hair is now a honey blonde, before it was a colourless kind of flaxen; his chest had filled out though he is still slender, and his skin is a golden tan. He is the image of golden youth.
The crowd surges forward and envelop him in a group hug, lifting him up under his arms. He hugs and kisses his way through the crowd, and joy of the return, the reprieve, the reunion radiates in all directions. Finally he comes to me and the crowd parts. I stood naked as he, with my eyes tentative and my arms open, until he came into them. We cry and embrace tightly, and though I still feel sorrow and shame for my neglect and desertion of him, I am warmed by the young flame of hope that has sprung up suddenly inside of me, us. I know now what it means to ‘cleave’, and that the pregnant Goddess is inside me, that I am she, and the baby is mine.
Now I have the urge to make a series of Goddess figures, all pregnant, each with a different gesture – hands holding belly, arms up to embrace, hands up waving, hands forward pointing, palms up, tenderly beseeching.
A thought: It is interesting that most of my soul retrieval journeys involve dance.
DREAM: Another amorous episode... clearly there’s something I’m not getting yet...
I am on Donlands Ave. near Strathmore Blvd. where I used to live. Near the corner my family (business) has a construction site, excavating. I am just passing by but Roman, an old acquaintance – another honey-blonde, shows up. He offers to carry my bags for me, gentleman that he is. He took the bag closest to him, it’s a lunch bag kind of thing, and I said, this is the heavy one, indicating the laptop bag I have strapped across my body. He took that too.
We continued down the sidewalk to where the house I lived in was directly across the street, and laid down on a quilt or comforter that’s spread between 2 parked cars (there’s no parking on that side of the street in real life). He embraced me and I surrendered myself to the intimacy, though it was not yet sexual. Then it got late and I said I have to go home. I picked up the comforter and my bags and something else – I remember carrying 4 things. The comforter was dragging a bit on the ground so I had to adjust it.
I got to the bus stop – this part is vague now – and somehow went up another level so I could get to the top deck of the bus.
I got off and while walking I took out my cellphone to call my mother – it was my first cellphone, a silver Panasonic – but I heard a couple of messages she left for me instead. The first one was a bit cold and resentful, something about grampa, the second one was quite excited and animated but I can’t remember what about...
DREAMWORK:
While still in the twilight state, another little pebble dropped into the pool of my consciousness, a word: STAGNATION – and I knew that’s what the ‘matter’ is, what’s in the Shadow, and what my weight gain is about, as it had been before the last time I gained this much weight. Don’t know how I could have forgotten. I think my dream brought this to the surface for me because I had just gotten married when we moved to Strathmore, and my ‘descent’ into darkness officially began. This eventually led to a state of stagnation on all levels about 10 years later. I still remember looking at the pictures of a vacation I took with my sister in the Bahamas, and having to admit to myself how ‘big’ I had gotten, and worse, how masculinized I had become. I was totally stuck in life, sucked down into the quagmire of my bitterness, hatred, rage and utter despair. It was there that I began to give up on life, and stagnation began to set in.
The family business was digging for its roots and building something new on Donlands near Strathmore because I, my parents and grampa have all lived there for many years, and this change is starting with us – me, grampa, then my parents. At the moment I still see myself as a distant observer, a passerby, a satellite orbiting my family at a comfortable distance, but inside I sense things have begun shifting without my knowing.
My Animus comes along and gallantly offers to carry my burden for me, lunchbox and laptop, I guess I was coming home from work. We got to where it all began, the stagnation of Sepia, across the street from 97 Strathmore, so there’s a little distance, a bit of objectivity, and healing can begin. For it was there that my marriage began its downward spiral in earnesty, and the split in me got bigger rather quickly. I came to hate men with as pure a passion as I’ve ever felt but it was the masculine in myself that I truly despised – the aggression, the violence, the destructiveness without remorse. Men were the convenient target of my projections. So now my gentle, tender, and melancholic masculine in the form of Roman has come to mend the residual effects of that time, the grief and sadness that would have overwhelmed me if I had allowed it to surface, or so my psyche believed. I am now on a different track (across the street in line with other cars), in sight of where the grief began but not in it anymore.
But I supposed my work is not yet complete, I still had to go home to Mother... and grampa...
Feeling as if I cannot concentrate well enough to do this dreamwork right now... still murky...
_____________
Monday, August 2, 2010 – begin MasterCleanse fast today
DREAM: I am in a work environment beside a large, long table, size of a boardroom table but just plain dark wood, more like a worktable. There are small displays on it, brochure stands, pamphlets and such in neat piles. I am looking for vacation destinations that employees are allowed to choose, as if they are company-sponsored. The first one was Crystal Palace, but I knew this is not the one. Then I came around the table and heard or saw the name ‘Isnae! Isnae!’ and knew that that’s the one. I think Nancie was there too. A business card caught my eye so I picked it up, though I don’t remember now if it was for ‘Isnae! Isnae!’, looked at the design and really liked it. It was a bit shorter than the regular 3.5” long, vertical format with rounded corners and a bronzy colour. A white band of italic type across the middle, like space for a tagline, information in text on the top, and a map on the bottom. Double-sided so there was a picture on the bottom instead of the map. I was very impressed by how the designer managed to make such good use of the space to fit so much information, and with such lovely design sense. I took a card.
DREAMWORK:
Still about work, though this time about taking a break from it, but not actually leaving the employment. I guess that shows improvement on how I feel about work, that I don’t have to sever all ties. It’s a reflection of how much fear I feel about being out in the world. I need to heal this fear.
The dream company is a friendly one, not trying to impress by ostentatiousness, but caring about employees enough to sponsor vacations for them. Crystal Palace I rejected outright, because it gives me the impression of a bingo hall, something pedestrian, a mainstream choice. The kind of place I think Nancie would choose, or at least I like to think so.
_________
I have an image of myself, standing as if on a hilltop, calmly surveying the vista before me. Scattered across the landsacpe before me are countless scenes of my life, each one being reenacted on its own little stage concurrently, all together displaying a gallery of mini-theatrics. What does this image tell me? If I take a step closer, I begin to sense that each scene is a story complete in itself, even as it is a part of a whole – my life. Each is a small gem, sometimes uncut, but always exquisite with details and its own glory. Strung together, I hold a necklace of the rich and meanful moments of my life. The stories are told simply, lightly, and honestly, above a pure and steady white flame, regardless of the gravity of the subject matter. Most of these stories are of my wounds and healing.
___________
BATHTUB INSIGHTS:
Q: What do you feel compelled to do? List.
My work is to heal consciousness, that is, to heal what’s already emerged, not what’s still in the unconscious. Of couse, I have to heal my own consciousness first, to the degree that I am ready to help heal other consciousnesses. I see an image of a lozenge shaped, ivory white stone, flat on top, as if cut with a machine, though there isn’t a sharpe edge anywhere. It is submerged in water, sitting on the bottom of a pool quietly. I pick it up and hold it flat against my left cheek, and I could feel a cool spread of energy coming into me from the stone. I hold it against little Ana’s cheek, and ask Source to heal whatever in her consciousness needs healing. But I know I am not quite ready to do this work yet, my own work is still the focus right now. I will be ready by February next year.
___________
Now I’m lying in bed... My body has something to tell me: Make young art. But I don’t feel that I know how... Make art from a place that’s primitive, exuberant, uninhibited, straight from the gut, without artifice. It is a state of being more so than just physically letting loose and making art. And though my mind does not have a clue how to get to that state, I know that my body knows. So I shall trust and beseech my body to take me there.
Somehow this touches off something that’s lurking in the shadows – the knowing that I have never deepened into anything in my life so far, never persevered into expertise in anything I’ve pursued, art & design, homeopathy, various healing modalities, nutrition, management, and now I’m starting something new again... Is it because I lack the stick-to-it-ness, or that I am simply potentially mediocre, or that I just haven’t found the thing I love doing?? My head insists that the answer is yes to all 3 parts, but my body says it is only the latter.
So it has taken all of my life to find what I love doing, even though I was born with that knowledge... well, hopefully I am just coming full circle to that... more like a spiral, as I keep coming up to the same landmarks over and over, but always with a different self, having gained and lost, grown and diminished, bearing new wounds and scars of healing, thus coming to face another level in myself. This is the phenomenon of the healing spiral.
“Man is free only when he is doing what the deepest self likes, and knowing what the deepest self likes, ah! that takes some diving.” ~ D.H. Lawrence.
It occurs to me that I really am a squirrel (I’ve had several dreams in the past involving squirrels). I collect whatever is my object of desire at the time, as many/much as I can ‘carry’, or more, and I stash it away for some indefinite future when I might dig it out and allow it to serve some of its original purpose, though I would say more often than not, this purpose does not manifest in fulfillment. Either I forget I have it, or I lose interest in it, or I’ve moved on from my need of it. I am but a transient collector; true collectors seek meaning in what they collect. I am a greedy, graspy, wasteful little squirrel, driven to frenetic activity by fear of hunger, afraid that I might have to do without.
The healing: (imagine holding healing stone to my forehead) TRUST in the universe to always provide for me, as it has. DISCERNMENT in knowing ‘what’ I need and ‘how much’ I need, no more, no less. Replenishment comes with the next season, the next opportunity, as it has always. There is also something ancestral in this pattern of mine. I hold the stone to my heart, because I can feel the great many heartbreaks my ancestors have endured, believing they had been forsaken by God and mankind. Then down to my belly, all the powerlessness, hopelessness, and the raging hunger that killed. I can hear the howling rage in my mind that went on and on... So much healing is needed.
I want to have a memorial to my ancestors for what they have suffered for the perpetuation of our lineage, the sacrifices they have made of themselves to sustain life. A dragon carved in black jade as a pendant that I can wear. (Is there such thing as black jade?) Found several online, including Etsy.
___________
Thursday, August 5, 2010
DREAM that a young boy had drowned in his bed/bathtub (it was shaped like a bed but had water in it instead of a mattress. I think he was naked. He was tall and thin and very pale, no more than 10 or 12 y.o. I opened the bedroom door and saw him and freaked out. Another girl was with me. I started to bawl unconsolably from the shock but did not go near the body. I have the feeling that he was related to the other girl, although she did not show any grief even as she went to the body which had to be unfolded, because it was actually folded in half very neatly and flat. I don’t have a sense whether he killed himself or accidentally drowned.
DREAMWORK: (during the drive up to Algonquin)
It was probably around that pre-adolescent age that we started to think aobut what we want to be when we grow up, when it began to have a glimmer of reality. And even though I had been a high-achiever in childhood, I was beginning to fall off my pedestal incrementally as the grades go up, so that by grade 6, which is the grade before ‘middle’ school in Taiwan, I was ranking in the 20s – a far cry from the days when I ranked first or second in class. I think my confidence in myself really took a dive, and worse, there was no one for me to talk to about it. Not that I would have wanted to talk about it, I was too busy trying to hide it. This hiding developed into my greatest survival mechanism – to pretend I am a success at all cost – the big cover-up. But somewhere inside myself I’ve always felt a tiny twinge, like a line of mouse type used in a disclaimer, the words: The Great Pretender. And I know, eventually, when I could face it a few years ago, that this was me.
The cost? Was the growth and development of my Animus – the young boy. Instead, I grew and cultivated the persona of a tough, cold and indifferent bitch-on-wheels, so that I could compete and make my way in the world of patriarchal rule. I cut off my feelings as much as I could, and only allowed anger to show, the rest I considered a sign of weakness, which had no place in a man’s world. So the young, sensitive, growing masculine had to be hidden away like a deformed offspring, starved and stunted from neglect and denial, and finally, drowned in the cold water of my apathy and indifference.
I have worn this façade of indifference for so long that I was not even aware of this death in myself. It is only when my unconscious was brought face to face with it in this dream that I was hit with the shock and grief of what has happened, that I mourned the loss of this essential part of myself.
My shadow, the other girl, is the one who can help me revive this dead part. She has unfolded the body, and healing is now possible. She will bring to him the tender loving care and nurture and sustenance that he needs. As for me, my ego-self, I resolve to surrender that hardened exterior, the Great Pretender, and allow my authentic self, along with all of its feelings to express themselves in the light of day.
I thank you, Source and my dreams, for this great healing.
___________
Friday, August 6, 2010
DREAM that I am sitting on the floor of a second storey with my legs hanging over the edge of the building because there is no wall or railing. I am writing in a notebook with a blue fountain pen. I could look out and see nearby below there were buskers performing. One guy was singing Latin songs, then an oriental man joined in with guitar I think, then someone started playing a drum.
Out of the corner of my vision I see a dog walk by, then a voice said, ‘So you are santa maria’, at the same time I looked up to see R., an ex-boyfriend, in front of me. As soon as I heard the voice I knew who it was. He was dressed all in light blue denim and seemed a bit slighter in build than I remembered him. I glanced up at him but didn’t say anything. My first thought was that I didn’t look particularly good just then, no make-up or hair done. I saw that there were bright blue ink stains on the right side of my pinkish salmon skirt, a skirt I have in real life. I felt slightly agitated then...
DREAMWORK:
I seemed not be afraid to hang over the edge anymore, even if it is only the second storey. I’ve come down to the ground, at least with the more personal and emotional stuff (blue ink), able to be honest enough to express it. I think the way Michael and I have been able to talk about some of our ancient history, things we’ve forgotten about and things we haven’t wanted to even talk to ourselves about, yesterday and today since we started our cleanse as well as this trip to Algonquin, has brought me to this new level of expression and groundedness that’s reflected in this part of the dream. I can now see clearly and distinctly the 3 centres in myself – the 3 musicians – and how they’ve come together: the heart songs joined by the head accompaniment and last but not least important, the body rhythm and pulse that is foundational to my whole being. The 3 are finally performing together, making the beautiful music that is creativity. I sincerely hope that means it will soon manifest in my life.
Santa Maria being Spanish has the colour of romance and passion to me, light blue being the colour of Mary, who is the personification of the Feminine God – Goddess – to me, is also the source of creativity. R. being my Animus in my dream, and who in real life meant the first awakening of love and passion to me, has come to tell me that this is who I am, who I’ve become. The weight of my relationship with him has certainly become lighter as I’ve worked through the many layers. I feel I’m very nearly there in the healing of this particular relationship.
I saw his dog first, though briefly, before I heard his voice, as if to give me a swift warning or clue that this is about love as emotional attachment, because that is what that dog represents. I need Eros in my life because it feeds creativity. I need to be in love with my own masculine, feel the kind of passion and romantic force of energy that overtakes me completely, splits me wide open so that I can do nothing but surrender, and as much as any of us fear the loss of control, I would throw myself over its cliff over and over again. The ecstasy of total abandon, of utter surrender. Fall madly in love with my Self. This to me is an inherent state of Goddess nature, and I long to be there.
But my first reaction was one of shame and unworthiness in the dream, that I’m not desirable enough to attract him, my masculine. This negative body image I have remains a wound in my feminine. The dream is telling me to allow my masculine emotion – anger – to spill, to be expressed – onto my feminine, the bright pink skirt, to blur the line a little between what I believe to be masculine expressions and what I believe to be feminine, that they really come from the same places: the 3 centres creating together, passionately, freely, and ecstatically.
But I became agitated, fearful when I am confronted with the possibility of unleashing raw masculine energy on the feminine, for although I can now discern between masculinity and patriarchy, I have not forgiven what patriarchy has done to the feminine. I need to forgive, and embrace. This is what needs healing now.
Patriarchy is a hurt, angry little boy crying for his mom. I will go to sleep now with this image in my mind.
_____________
Monday, August 9, 2010 – New Moon
Haven’t been able to remember my dreams for the last few days, except for a tiny but persistent feeling that keeps bringing me back to a dream from last week, the one of the death of my young masculine self. When I went into it this morning I realized that my work on it is unfinished, for he is still dead, dead to the world. I have not yet recovered myself from the shock and grief of the discovery to complete the soul retrieval. I know that it is the Goddess, the Great Feminine who can heal this wound of mine, and she has come in the form of the Shadow girl in the dream, the girl who unfolded the body and lifted it out of the water, while I stood rooted to the spot and lost control.
I ask her now to please come to me, I need her too. She comes over and folds me in her arms. I noticed that she has black wavy hair that is tied back. Suddenly I felt her belly sticking into me, I pull back and ask her, are you pregnant?
She smiles, yes.
Is it a boy or girl? I said.
Both, she said.
Twins!
So to speak! mischief in her smile.
Then she leads me by the hand to the body of the young boy. She kneels down on the ground and sits holding him in her lap. I am now reminded of Mary holding the dead body of Jesus after his body was taken down from the cross. I ask, why was his body folded in half? Because you did not want to face him, she replies. Oh.
She pulls me gently down and guides me to hold the body with her, the three of us in a hug. I was a bit afraid to touch him, imagining that it would feel like the skin of an amphibian. In fact it was cool but dry. Then she picks him up as if he weighs nothing, gets up and puts him down on a higher bed, like a massage table covered by a sheet. She folds the sheet around him and I realized that she is making a shroud. When he is completely wrapped she picks up the body again and carries it out of the room. We come into the living room, empty except for a long table in the middle. And there she lays him down, and I knew we are going to have wake for him. Steadily and quietly, people started coming in, all moving slowly. These are all the parts of myself, my selves, my personae, my Shadow selves – my people. One by one they come up to the body, some kiss him, some caress him, some cry over him, all are tender and loving. Then one puts his head down on his chest, and proclaims, I hear a heartbeat! I don’t know whether to believe that, but the crowd was awed.
With that, we hold hands and form circle around circle around circle around the body, and begin to dance and chant in unison, ‘Hoo-hah! Hoo-hah! Hoo-hah!’ I was amazed that there were so many parts of myself that I couldn’t hardly see the end of the crowd, and as I marveled a knowing came to me, ‘We are of thee.’ But why ‘thee’, my mind asks. Because my ancestors are here too, on the outer rings, protecting me. And I realized that the Goddess is there, on the outermost circle, her arms super-stretched half way around the circle, her hands holding the hands of God, her Consort. So He is here too. I am in the presence of the Great Collective of Life. Even when I think I am alone, I am not.
Suddenly the dance stops and in unison we raise our hands in the air and wave: Hooooo! Then point our fingertips toward the body in the centre: Haaah! – reminding me of the Monkey Dance of the Balinese. Wave/point and chant is repeated 10 times, then everything stops. In the stillness I can see the shroud begins to move, the body is trying to push its way out. A low murmur spreads through the crowd. Finally he spreads his arms out of the cloth and emerges. His colour has deepened, all over, his hair is now a honey blonde, before it was a colourless kind of flaxen; his chest had filled out though he is still slender, and his skin is a golden tan. He is the image of golden youth.
The crowd surges forward and envelop him in a group hug, lifting him up under his arms. He hugs and kisses his way through the crowd, and joy of the return, the reprieve, the reunion radiates in all directions. Finally he comes to me and the crowd parts. I stood naked as he, with my eyes tentative and my arms open, until he came into them. We cry and embrace tightly, and though I still feel sorrow and shame for my neglect and desertion of him, I am warmed by the young flame of hope that has sprung up suddenly inside of me, us. I know now what it means to ‘cleave’, and that the pregnant Goddess is inside me, that I am she, and the baby is mine.
Now I have the urge to make a series of Goddess figures, all pregnant, each with a different gesture – hands holding belly, arms up to embrace, hands up waving, hands forward pointing, palms up, tenderly beseeching.
A thought: It is interesting that most of my soul retrieval journeys involve dance.
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